THE 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


Lives  of  the  Queens  of  England 

of  the  House  of  Hanover 

Volume  I. 


List  of  Illustrations 


GEORGE  THE  SECOND  (See  page  308)     .        .       Frontispiece 

SOPHIA,  PRINCESS  PALATINE 60 

SOPHIA  DOROTHEA,  CONSORT  OF  GEORGE  I.     .        .124 

GEORGE  THE  FIRST 258 

GEORGE  WILLIAM  FREDERICK 335 


Preface  to  the  Second  Edition 

THE  guest  of  Polycrates,  who  ran  away  from  his 
host  because  he  was  for  ever  fortunate,  was  like  one 
of  those  critics,  of  the  Jeremy  Collier  school,  who 
cannot  witness  a  modest  success  without,  to  speak 
metaphorically,  trying  to  slit  the  nose  of  the  author. 
For  my  own  part,  I  have  little  reason  to  complain ; 
my  task  is  rather  to  be  grateful,  and  I  take  the 
opportunity  of  the  appearance  of  a  second  edition 
of  my  anecdotical  sketches,  to  give  expression  to 
such  gratitude,  with  all  the  heartiness  which  the 
public  patronage  deserves. 

In  the  introduction  to  the  first  edition,  I  made 
ready  acknowledgment  of  the  many  defects  which 
marked  my  volumes,  and  in  the  body  of  the  work 
itself  I  entered  especial  protest  against  my  being 
supposed  presumptuous  enough  to  claim  the  title 
of  "historian,"  —  humble  "story-teller"  was  all  that 
I  presumed  to  call  myself.  To  review  me  under  the 
former  title,  therefore,  would  show  a  culpable  disre- 
gard for  truth,  or  unexampled  carelessness  on  the 
part  of  the  reviewer.  By  one  such  reviewer,  some 
typographical  errors  have  been  made  the  most  of ; 
and  mistakes,  such  as  a  c  for  a  t  in  the  name  of 
Moltke,  are  dwelt  upon  by  a  critic,  who  does  not 
trouble  himself  to  write  correctly  the  name  of  my 

ix 


x  PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 

own  publisher.  In  this  he  reminds  me  of  Walpole, 
sneering  at  the  limping  syntax  of  Chesterfield, — 
"Lord  Chesterfield,"  says  Horace,  "who  thought  of 
nothing  so  much  as  the  purity  of  his  language,  says, 
« You  and  me  shall  not  be  well  together,'  and  this  not 
once,  but  on  every  such  occasion.  A  friend  of  mine 
says  that  it  was  certainly  to  avoid  that  female  inac- 
curacy of  '  They  don't  mind  you  and  I ; '  and  yet," 
adds  the  critical  Walpole,  "the  latter  is  the  least  bad 
of  the  two." 

This  sort  of  criticism  recalls  to  my  mind  that  once 
famous  or  infamous  individual  whose  name,  as  was 
remarked  by  Moore,  rhymed  so  well  to  "bilks."  I 
allude  to  the  notorious  John  Wilks,  Jr.,  whose  bubble 
schemes  scattered  such  desolation  in  that  year  of 
devastation,  1826.  The  great  ex-M.  P.  for  Sudbury 
contrived  to  withdraw  from  the  very  particular,  but 
not  very  flattering,  notice  of  the  public  for  a  few 
years ;  but  about  1 843  he  was  in  England  again, 
and  was  employed  upon  Frase^s  Magazine,  when 
chance  threw  him  in  my  way.  His  contributions 
read  like  those  of  a  highly  honourable  and  a  remark- 
ably pure-minded  man,  and  they  chiefly  consisted  in 
his  "Reminiscences  of  Men  and  Things."  They 
who  remember  his  career  can  best  determine  if  the 
tone  of  his  productions  gave  any  true  idea  of  the 
man.  He  lived  loosely,  and  edited  a  religious  news- 
paper. 

I  had,  at  the  time,  but  just  commenced  my  own 
unpretending  literary  life  by  some  "first  appear- 
ances" in  Fraser,  and  it  was  Wilks's  practice  to 
criticise  these  with  a  freedom  which  was  very  read- 
ily excused.  "They  are  all  very  well,"  he  would 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND   EDITION  xi 

say,  "and  may  be  acceptable  to  young  ladies,  but 
if  you  would  rise  to  be  a  reviewer,  you  must  learn 
how  to  wield  a  tomahawk,  and  to  be  careless  whether 
your  victim  deserve  to  be  murdered  or  not."  I  sug- 
gested to  the  bubble  ^speculator  that  his  patronising 
Regina  would  never  tolerate  a  critic  who  was  guided 
by  such  a  principle.  Thereupon  he  laughed  aloud, 
and  told  me  how,  in  the  early  numbers,  Byron  was 
stigmatised  as  a  lame  malignant,  Jeffrey  "  put  down  " 
as  a  man  almost  forgotten,  Bowring  described  as  ser- 
vile and  sycophantish,  the  great  and  glorious  Profes- 
sor Wilson  sneered  at  as  a  writer  of  sugary  novels 
for  tear-eyed  misses ;  and  Bulwer  pooh-poohed  as 
having  "  no  imagination  and  very  little  fire,"  dealing 
in  "vulgar  slip-slop,"  and  whose  alleged  wit  and 
wisdom  were  only  writhings  and  contortions.  I 
expressed,  of  course,  a  conviction  that  they  who 
said  as  much  of  these  authors  did  so  after  mature 
study  of  their  works :  he  laughed  aloud  again,  and 
opening  at  page  209  of  the  second  number  of  the 
magazine,  he  pointed  to  the  following  passage  :  "  Re- 
viewers labour  under  the  ill  reputation  of  never  read- 
ing the  books  which  they  review,  and  we  plead  guilty 
to  having  frequently  committed  that  felonious  but 
pleasant  practice."  "Well,"  said  I,  to  the  highly 
respectable  writer  in  Fraser,  "if  I  ever  produce  a 
book  that  shall  be  honoured  by  the  notice  of  one 
of  your  reviewers,  I  shall  not  complain,  even  if  I 
be  made  the  victim  of  a  « felonious  practice.'  "  Nor 
can  I  say  I  have  suffered  in  this  way.  Even  if  I 
had,  I  could  accept  censure  cheerfully  from  a  quarter 
which  sneers  at  "Christopher  North,"  and  affects  to 
think  that  there  is  something  unmanly  in  writing 


xii  PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 

what  may  gain  the  peculiar  sympathy  of  women.     I 
beg  leave  rather  to  hold  with  Von  Redwitz,  that,  — 

"  .  .  .  ist  der  Schreiber  nicht  zu  neiden, 
Den  nicht  die  Jungfraun  mogen  leiden." 

I  do  not  feel  authorised  to  notice  otherwise  than 
courteously  the  critical  censure  to  which  I  may  be 
justly  exposed,  on  account  of  errors  made  through 
overhaste,  but  duly  corrected.  It  is  a  matter  of 
indifference  to  me  whether,  in  casting  such  censure, 
my  critic  be  influenced  by  irreproachable  motives,  or 
by  a  desire  to  further  the  interests  of  another  book 
on  the  same  subject,  by  making  the  most  of  the  real 
or  fancied  demerits  in  mine.  In  either  case,  I  will, 
in  future,  endeavour  to  profit  by  the  correction  ;  pro- 
fessing, at  the  same  time,  my  right  to  maintain  my 
own  opinion  on  persons  and  events,  differ  from  it 
any  illustrious  ovSels  that  may. 

But  there  remains  a  special  reason  why  I  should 
venture  to  reply  to  the  only  unfavourable  critic  whom 
it  has  been,  as  yet,  my  lot  to  encounter.  This  gen- 
tleman makes  the  exceedingly  foolish  assertion,  that 
in  my  book  I  let  slip  no  opportunity  to  blacken  and 
vilify  the  great  ones  of  the  house  of  Brunswick, 
whose  illustrious  descendant  sits  on  the  throne  of 
these  realms !  Well,  it  is  a  pleasure  to  see  a  con- 
ceited man  break  his  head  with  his  own  flail,  and  this 
my  judicious  adversary  has  done  effectually.  The 
champion  of  Brunswick  asserts  that  the  correspond- 
ence published  some  few  years  ago  as  that  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  and  Konigsmark,  must  be  considered  au- 
thentic ;  at  least,  he  holds  it  to  be  such,  although  he 
admits  that  every  one  has  a  right  to  form  his  own 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION  xiii 

opinion  thereon.  He  maintains  that  this  unclean 
mass,  jumble  of  dates,  no  dates,  and  wrong  dates, 
with  words  supplied  to  eke  out  the  sense  required, 
is  conclusive  of  the  guilt  of  Sophia  Dorothea.  The 
declaration  of  the  latter,  made  weekly,  on  her  taking 
the  sacrament,  protesting  her  innocence,  he  holds  as 
worthless.  Nay,  he  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  there 
are  grounds  for  believing  that  an  illicit  intercourse 
between  the  too  famous  pair  existed  before  the  mar- 
riage of  Sophia  and  George  Louis.  So  the  enemies 
of  the  lady  thought,  when  they  used,  in  London,  to 
speak  of  George  Augustus  as  "young  Konigsmark," 
—  considering  the  count  as  his  father.  My  reviewer 
would  have  shown  more  judgment  had  he  "conde- 
scended "  to  take  up  the  glove  he  affects  to  fancy  I 
threw  down,  touching  the  matter  of  Leibnitz,  rather 
than  agitate  this  more  delicate  question  at  all.  Does 
he  not  tremble  at  the  very  thought  that,  if  the  abom- 
inable correspondence  and  his  own  silly  "probabil- 
ity "  be  maintainable,  he  bastardises  a  truly  legitimate 
branch  of  Brunswick,  and  authorises  the  heralds  to 
clap  a  bar-sinister  on  the  arms  of  the  royal  family  of 
England  ?  The  too  eager  gentleman,  of  course,  did 
not  see  the  effect  of  his  own  awkward  argument. 
Let  me  implore  him  to  consider  the  case  of  the 
ass  in  the  fable.  That  celebrated  animal  fancied 
he  could,  with  his  hoofs,  whisk  off  the  flies  from 
the  face  of  his  sleeping  master,  and  what  was  the 
result  ?  He  only  inflicted  an  ugly  bruise  and  left  a 
smear  behind  him. 

Surely,  when  this  critic,  after  telling  his  readers 
that  in  the  story  of  Sophia  Dorothea  I  had  only  fur- 
nished a  sentimental  romance  for  ladies,  reproaches 


xiv  PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 

me  for  not  making  use  of  this  disgusting  correspond- 
ence, he  may  be  said  to  have  allowed  his  sense  of 
decency  to  sleep  for  a  moment ;  nor  has  he  made 
any  but  an  infelicitous  use  of  it  himself.  The  earliest 
date  in  the  correspondence  is  posterior  to  the  birth 
of  him  who  was  subsequently  George  the  Second; 
but  my  reviewer's  edifying  discovery  that  there  is 
a  probability  for  believing  that  the  guilty  intercourse 
of  the  count  and  George  the  Second's  mother  com- 
menced before  her  marriage  with  our  first  George, 
only  tends  to  establish  the  ugly  suspicion,  —  one 
which  never  even  entered  into  the  head  of  the  Pre- 
tender himself,  —  that  a  bastard  of  Konigsmark  may 
have  ascended  the  English  throne;  an  event  which 
was  certainly  not  contemplated  by  the  Act  of  Suc- 
cession. 

Compared  with  this,  my  culpable  inadvertence  of 
making  a  couple  of  blunders  in  a  matter  of  relation- 
ship sinks  into  the  character  of  a  very  venial  error. 
And  now,  who  does  most  wrong  to  Brunswick,  —  he 
who  roughly  shakes  only  the  unclean  bygone  princes 
of  that  house,  or  he  who,  disregarding  the  sacra- 
mental assertion  of  a  woman,  draws  conclusions 
which,  only  that  they  are  as  worthless  as  they  are 
heedlessly  made,  might  arm  the  enemies  of  the 
Crown  with  the  most  terrible  of  weapons? 

I  would  add  more,  were  it  worth  while,  for  the  ben- 
efit of  a  gentleman  who  "  rails  by  system  and  detracts 
by  rule,"  who  does  not  seem  to  know  that  Moreri  is 
good  authority  for  speaking  of  "  Henry  the  Dog," 
and  who  gravely  asserts  that  the  bishopric  of  Osna- 
burgh  was  "always"  given  to  a  younger  son  of  the 
house  of  Hanover,  when,  in  truth,  it  was,  quite  as 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION  xv 

often,  not  in  the  family  at  all.  But  in  truth  it  is 
only  in  his  capacity  of  champion  for  Brunswick  (!) 
that  I  have  to  do  with  him.  As  such,  the  illustrious 
house,  for  whose  members  I  have  as  much  sincere 
respect  as  he,  will  have  found  in  their  champion  "  not 
much  of  a  conjuror;"  and  in  that  hastily  assumed 
character,  I  will  only  say  of  him  what  the  English 
nobleman  said  to  the  dull  old  herald  who  had  mis- 
placed his  lordship  in  a  royal  procession :  "  Why, 
you  silly  man,  you  don't  understand  your  own  silly 
business."  THE  AUTHOR. 

September,  1855. 


Contents 

Sophia  Dorothea,  of  Zell 
Wife  of  George  I. 

CHAPTER  i. 

GEORGE   OF   BRUNSWICK-ZELL   AND    ELEANORE    D'OLBREUSE 

PAGB 

Woden,  the  Father  of  the  Line  of  Brunswick  —  The  Seven 
Brothers  at  Dice,  for  a  Wife  —  D'Esmiers  d'Olbreuse  and 
His  Daughter  Eleanora  —  Love-passages,  and  a  Marriage 
—  A  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh  —  Birth  of  Sophia  Dorothea  .  3 

CHAPTER  II. 

WIVES   AND   FAVOURITES 

The  Single  Blessing  Allowed  to  Women  —  A  Ducal  House- 
hold—  Elevation  in  Rank  of  the  Mother  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  —  Births  and  Deaths  —  A  Lover  for  Sophia  — 
The  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh  an  Imitator  of  the  Grand 
Monarque  —  Two  Successful  Female  Adventurers  at 
Osnaburgh 18 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE   BRUNSWICKER    IN    ENGLAND 

Prince  Augustus  of  Wolfenbuttel,  the  Accepted  Lover  of 
Sophia — Superstition  of  the  Duke  of  Zell  —  Intrigues 
of  Madame  von  Platen  —  A  Rival  Lover— Prince  George 


xviii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Louis :  Makes  an  Offer  of  Marriage  to  Princess  Anne  — 
Policy  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  —  Prince  George  in  Eng- 
land :  Festivities  on  Account  of  His  Visit  —  Execution  of 
Lord  Stafford  —  Illness  of  Prince  Rupert  — The  Bill  of 
Exclusion,  and  the  Duke  of  York  at  Holyrood  —  Probable 
Succession  of  the  House  of  Brunswick  —  Prince  George 
Recalled  —  Successful  Intrigues  of  Sophia,  Wife  of  Ernest 

—  A  Group  for  an  Artist  —  Ill-fated  Marriage  of  Sophia  — 
Elizabeth,  Queen  of   Bohemia  —  "Goody    Palsgrave"  — 
The  Electress  Sophia,  and  Her  Intellectual  Skirmishes       .     32 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  HOUSEHOLD  OF   GEORGE  AND   SOPHIA 

Reception  of  Sophia  at  the  Court  of  Ernest  Augustus  —  Similar 
Position  of  Marie  Antoinette  and  Sophia  —  Misfortune  of 
the  Abigail  Use  —  Compassionated  by  the  Duchess  of  Zell 

—  Intrigues  and  Revenge  of  Madame  von  Platen  —  A  New 
Favourite,  Mile.  Ermengarde  von  Schulemberg  —  A  Mar- 
riage Fete,  and  Intended  Insult  to  the  Princess  Sophia  — 
Gross  Vice  of  George  Louis 60 

CHAPTER  V. 

COURT  LIFE  IN   GERMANY  —  THE   ELECTORATE  OF   HANOVER 

Vienna,  the  Most  Dissolute  Capital  in  Europe  —  Extravagance 
and  Profligacy  of  Augustus  the  Strong,  afterward  King  of 
Poland  —  Fete  in  Honour  of  His  Mistress,  Maria  Aurora 
KSnigsmark  —  The  Alchemist,  and  His  Fate  —  Gorgeous 
Wrecks  of  His  Reign  at  Dresden  —  Count  Bruhl's  Profli- 
gate Expenditure  —  The  Court  of  Bavaria  —  The  Sporting 
Propensities  of  the  Electress  Maria  Amelia  —  Her  Fond- 
ness for  Dogs  —  Reception  of  George  the  First's  Mis- 
tresses by  the  English  Mob  —  Infamy  of  the  German 
Ecclesiastical  Princes  —  Expulsion  of  the  Duke  of  Meck- 
lenburg-Schwerin  —  His  Matrimonial  Adventures  —  His 
Apologist  Leibnitz  —  Poverty  of  Prince  Rupert  at  His 
Death,  and  Lottery  for  His  Jewels  —  The  House  of  Han- 
over Ranges  Itself  against  France  —  Ernest  Augustus 
Created  Elector  —  Domestic  Rebellion  of  His  Son  Maxi- 
milian —  His  Accomplice,  Count  Molcke,  Beheaded  — 
The  Electors  of  Germany 73 


CONTENTS  xix 

PACK 

CHAPTER  VI. 
THE   KONIGSMARKS 

Count  Charles  John  Kbnigsmark's  Roving  and  Adventurous 
Life  —  The  Great  Heiress  —  An  Intriguing  Countess  — 
"  Tom  of  Ten  Thousand  "  —  The  Murder  of  Lord  John 
Thynne  —  The  Fate  of  the  Count's  Accomplices  —  Court 
Influence  Shelters  the  Guilty  Count 95 

CHAPTER  VII. 
KONIGSMARK   AT  COURT 

Various  Accomplishments  of  Count  Philip  Christopher  Kbnigs- 
mark  —  The  Early  Companion  of  Sophia  Dorothea  —  Her 
Friendship  for  Him  —  An  Interesting  Interview  —  Intrigues 
of  Madame  von  Platen  —  Foiled  in  Her  Machinations  —  A 
Dramatic  Incident  —  The  Unlucky  Glove  —  Scandal  against 
the  Honour  of  the  Princess  —  A  Mistress  Enraged  on  Dis- 
covery of  Her  Using  Rouge  —  Indiscretion  of  the  Princess 
—  Her  Visit  to  Zell  —  The  Elector's  Criminal  Intimacy 
with  Madame  von  Schulemberg  —  William  the  Norman's 
Brutality  to  His  Wife  —  The  Elder  Aymon  —  Brutality  of 
the  Austrian  Empress  to  "  Madame  Royale "  —  Return 
of  Sophia,  and  Reception  by  Her  Husband  .  .  .  108 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  CATASTROPHE 

The  Scheming  Mother  Foiled  —  Count  Konigsmark  Too 
Garrulous  in  His  Cups  —  An  Eavesdropper  —  A  Forged 
Note  —  A  Mistress's  Revenge  —  Murder  of  the  Count  — 
The  Countess  Aurora  Konigsmark's  Account  of  Her 
Brother's  Intimacy  with  the  Princess  —  Horror  of  the 
Princess  on  Hearing  of  the  Count's  Death  —  Seizure  and 
Escape  of  Mile,  von  Knesebeck  —  A  Divorce  Mooted  — - 
The  Princess's  Declaration  of  Her  Innocence  —  Decision 
of  the  Consistorial  Court  —  The  Sages  of  the  Law  Foiled 
by  the  Princess  —  Condemned  to  Captivity  in  the  Castle  of 
Ahlden  —  Decision  Procured  by  Bribery  —  Bribery  Univer- 
sal in  England  —  The  Countess  Aurora  Konigsmark  Be- 
comes the  Mistress  of  Augustus,  King  of  Poland — Her 


xx  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Unsuccessful  Mission  to  Charles  XII.  —  Exemplary  Con- 
duct in  Her  Latter  Years  —  Becomes  Prioress  of  the 
Nunnery  of  Quedlinburg 125 

CHAPTER  IX. 

PRISON   AND   PALACE 

The  Prison  of  the  Captive  Sophia  Dorothea  —  Employment  of 
Her  Time  —  The  Church  of  Ahlden  Repaired  by  Her  — 
Cut  Off  from  Her  Children  —  Sympathy  of  Ernest 
Augustus  for  His  Daughter-in-law  —  Her  Father's  Return- 
ing Affection  for  Her  —  Opening  Prospects  of  the  House 
of  Hanover  —  Lord  Macclesfield's  Embassy  to  Hanover, 
and  His  Right  Royal  Reception  —  Description  of  the 
Electress  —  Toland's  Description  of  Prince  George  Lquis 

—  Magnificent  Present  to  Lord  Macclesfield  —  The  Prin- 
cess Sophia  and  the  English  Liturgy  —  Death  of  the  Duke 
of  Zell  —  Visit  of  Prince  George  to  His  Captive  Mother 
Prevented 159 

CHAPTER  X. 
THE   SUCCESSION  —  DEATH   OF  THE  ELECTRESS 

Marriage  of  Prince  George  to  Princess  Caroline  of  Anspach, 
and  of  His  Sister  to  the  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia  — 
Honours  Conferred  by  Queen  Anne  on  Prince  George 

—  Intention    to    Bring    over    to    England    the    Princess 
Sophia — Opposed  by  Queen  Anne  —  Foundation  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Prussia —  The  Establishment  of  This  Protes- 
tant Kingdom   Promoted  by  the  Jesuits  —  The  Electress 
Sophia's   Visit   to   Loo  —  The   Law   Granting  Taxes   on 
Births,    Deaths,    and    Marriages  —  Complaint   of    Queen 
Anne    against   the   Electress  —  Tom    d'Urfey's   Doggerel 
Verses  on  Her  —  Death  of  the  Electress  —  Character  of 
Her 182 

CHAPTER  XI. 

AHLDEN    AND    ENGLAND 

The  Neglected  Captive  of  Ahlden  —  Unnoticed  by  Her  Son-in- 
law,  Except  to  Secure  Her  Property  —  Madame  von 


CONTENTS  xxi 

PAGR 

Schulemberg  —  The  Queen  of  Prussia  Prohibited  from 
Corresponding  with  Her  Imprisoned  Mother  —  The  Cap- 
tive Betrayed  by  Count  de  Bar — Death  of  Queen 
Anne  —  Anxiety  Felt  for  the  Arrival  of  King  George  — 
The  Duke  of  Marlborough's  Entry  —  Funeral  of  the 
Queen  —  Public  Entry  of  the  King  —  Adulation  of  Doctor 
Young  —  Madame  Kielmansegge,  the  New  Royal  Favour- 
ite—  Horace  Walpole's  Account  of  Her  —  "A  Hanover 
Garland  "  —  Ned  Ward,  the  Tory  Poet  —  Expression  of 
the  Public  Opinion  —  The  Duchess  of  Kendal  Bribed  by 
Lord  Bolingbroke  —  Bribery  and  Corruption  General  — 
Abhorrence  of  Parade  by  the  King  .  .  .  .  .210 

CHAPTER  XII. 
CROWN  AND  GRAVE 

Arrival  of  Caroline,  Princess  of  Wales  —  The  King  Dines  at 
the  Guildhall  —  Proclamation  of  the  Pretender  —  Coun- 
ter-proclamations —  Government  Prosecutions  —  A  Mutiny 
among  the  Troops  —  Impeachment  of  the  Duke  of  Ormond 
of  High  Treason — Punishment  of  Political  Offenders  — 
Failure  of  Rebellion  in  Scotland  —  Punishment  for  Wear- 
ing Oak-boughs  —  Riot  at  the  Mug-house  in  Salisbury 
Court,  and  Its  Fatal  Consequences  —  The  Prince  of 
Wales  Removed  from  the  Palace  —  Dissensions  between 
the  King  and  the  Prince>  —  Attempt  on  the  Life  of  King 
George  —  Marriage  of  the  King's  Illegitimate  Daughter  — 
The  South  Sea  Bubble  —  Birth  of  Prince  William,  the 
Butcher  of  Cnlloden  —  Death  of  the  Duchess  of  Zell  — 
Stricter  Imprisonment  of  the  Captive  of  Ahlden  —  Her 
Calm  Death  —  A  New  Royal  Favourite,  Mrs.  Brett  — 
Death  of  the  King  ........  225 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

BERENGARIA   AND  SOPHIA   DOROTHEA,  —  (XEUR   DE  LION, 
AND   GEORGE   OF   HANOVER 

Fate  of  Berengaria  —  The  Heiress  of  Cyprus  —  Comparison 
of  Sophia  and  the  Queen  of  Coeur  de  Lion  —  Richard  the 
First  and  the  Elector  —  Statue  to  George  the  First,  but 
Denied  to  Cromwell  —  Tyranny  and  Cruelty  of  Richard  — 


xxii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Origin  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter — Project  to  Make 
Away  with  the  Prince  of  Wales  —  Character  of  George  I. 
—  Anecdotes  of  Him  —  George  the  Second  as  a  Young 
Man  —  Picture  of  the  Court  of  Prussia  —  Brutality  of 
Frederick  to  His  Wife  and  Family  —  A  Drunkard  and 
Madman 245 


Caroline  Wilhelmina   Dorothea 
Wife  of  George  II. 

CHAPTER  I. 

BEFORE  THE  ACCESSION 

Birth  of  Princess  Caroline  —  Her  Early  Married  Life  —  Eulo- 
gised by  the  Poets  —  Gaiety  of  the  Court  of  the  Prince 
and  Princess  at  Leicester  House  —  Beauty  of  Miss  Bellen- 
den  —  Mrs.  Howard,  the  Prince's  Favourite  —  Intolerable 
Grossness  of  the  Court  of  George  the  First  —  Lord  Ches- 
terfield and  the  Princess  —  The  Mad  Duchess  —  Bucking- 
ham House  —  Rural  Retreat  of  the  Prince  at  Richmond ; 
the  Resort  of  Wit  and  Beauty  —  Swift's  Pungent  Verses 
—  The  Fortunes  of  the  Young  Adventurers,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Howard — The  Queen  at  Her"  Toilet —  Mrs.  Clayton, 
Her  Influence  with  Queen  Caroline  —  The  Prince  Ruled 
by  His  Wife  —  Doctor  Arbuthnot  and  Dean  Swift  —  The 
Princess's  Regard  for  Newton  and  Halley  —  Lord  Maccles- 
field's  Fall  —  His  Superstition,  and  That  of  the  Princess  — 
Prince  Frederick's  Vices  —  Not  Permitted  to  Come  to 
England  —  Severe  Rebuff  to  Lord  Hardwicke  —  Doctor 
Mead  —  Courage  of  the  Prince  and  Princess  —  The  Prin- 
cess's Friendship  for  Doctor  Friend  —  Swift  at  Leicester 
House  —  Royal  Visit  to  "  Bartlemy  Fair  "  .  .  -279 

CHAPTER  II. 
THE  FIRST  YEARS  OF, A   REIGN 

Death  of  George  the  First  —  Adroitness  of  Sir  Robert  Wai- 
pole  —  The  First  Royal  Reception  —  Unceremonious 


CONTENTS  xxiii 

FAGS 

Treatment  of  the  Late  King's  Will  —  The  Coronation  — 
Magnificent  Dress  of  Queen  Caroline  —  Mrs.  Oldfield,  in 
Queen  Catherine,  in  "  Henry  VIII."  —  The  King's  Rev- 
enue, and  the  Queen's  Jointure,  the  Result  of  Walpole's 
Exertions  —  His  Success  —  Management  of  the  King  by 
Queen  Caroline  —  Unseemly  Dialogue  between  Walpole 
and  Lord  Townshend  —  Gay's  "  Beggars'  Opera,"  and 
Satire  on  Walpole  —  Origin  of  the  Opera  —  Its  Great 
Success  —  Gay's  Cause  Espoused  by  the  Duchess  of 
Queensberry  —  Her  Smart  Reply  to  a  Royal  Message  — 
The  Tragedy  of  "  Frederick,  Duke  of  Brunswick  "  —  The 
Queen  Appointed  Regent  —  Prince  Frederick  Becomes 
Chief  of  the  Opposition  —  His  Silly  Reflections  on  the 
King  —  Agitation  about  the  Repeal  of  the  Corporation 
and  Test  Acts  —  The  Queen's  Ineffectual  Efforts  to  Gain 
over  Bishop  Hoadly  —  Sir  Robert  Extricates  Himself  — 
The  Church  Made  the  Scapegoat  —  Queen  Caroline 
Earnest  About  Trifles  —  Etiquette  of  the  Toilet  —  Fracas 
between  Mr.  Howard  and  the  Queen  —  Modest  Request 
of  Mrs.  Howard  —  Lord  Chesterfield's  Description  of  Her  307 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   MARRIAGE  OF  THE   PRINCESS  ANNE 

Violent  Opposition  to  the  King  by  Prince  Frederick  —  Read- 
ings at  Windsor  Castle  —  The  Queen's  Patronage  of 
Stephen  Duck  —  His  Melancholy  End  —  Glance  at  Pass- 
ing Events  —  Precipitate  Flight  of  Doctor  Nichols  — 
Princess  Anne's  Determination  to  Get  a  Husband  —  Louis 
XV.  Proposed  as  a  Suitor  ;  Negotiation  Broken  Off  —  The 
Prince  of  Orange's  Offer  Accepted  —  Ugly  and  Deformed 

—  The  King  and    Queen  Averse  to  the  Union  —  Dowry 
Settled  on  the    Princess  —  Anecdote   of   the   Duchess  of 
Marlborough  —  Illness    of   the    Bridegroom  —  Ceremonies 
Attendant  on  the  Marriage  —  Mortification  of  the  Queen 

—  The  Public   Nuptial    Chamber— Offence  Given  to  the 
Irish   Peers  —  The    Queen   and    Lady   Suffolk  —  Homage 
Paid  by  the  Princess  to   Her  Deformed  Husband  —  Dis- 
content of  Prince  Frederick  —  His  Anxiety  Not  Unnatural 

—  Congratulatory  Addresses  by  the  Lords  and  Commons 

—  Spirited  Conduct  of  the  Queen  —  Lord  Chesterfield  — 
Agitations    on   Walpole's    Celebrated    Excise    Scheme  — 


xxiv  CONTENTS 

PACK 

Lord  Stair  Delegated  to  Remonstrate  with  the  Queen 
—  Awkward  Performance  of  His  Mission  —  Sharply  Re- 
buked by  the  Queen  —  Details  of  the  Interview  —  The 
Queen's  Success  in  Overcoming  the  King's  Antipathy  to 
Walpole  —  Comments  of  the  Populace  —  Royal  Interview 
with  a  Bishop 335 


Sophia  Dorothea,  of  Zell 
Wife  of  George  I. 

Das  Glanzende  ist  nicht  immer  das  Bessere. 

—  KOTZEBUE,  Bruder  Moritz. 


Lives  of  the  Queens  of 
England;;. 


CHAPTER   I. 

GEORGE  OF  BRUNSWICK  -  ZELL  AND  ELEANORS 
D'OLBREUSE 

Woden,  the  Father  of  the  Line  of  Brunswick  —  The  Seven  Brothers 
at  Dice,  for  a  Wife  —  D'Esmiers  d'Olbreuse  and  His  Daughter 
Eleanora —  Love-passages,  and  a  Marriage  —  A  Bishop  of  Osna- 
burgh  —  Birth  of  Sophia  Dorothea. 

WHEN  George  the  First  ascended  the  throne  of 
England,  the  heralds,  with  an  alacrity  at  once  offi- 
cious and  official,  proceeded  to  furnish  him  with  that 
sort  of  greatness  without  profit  and  without  value, 
which  it  is  part  of  their  profession  to  provide  for 
those  who  are  weak  enough  to  need  it,  and  wealthy 
enough  to  pay  for  it.  They,  in  other  words,  pro- 
vided him  with  an  ancestry ;  and  they  constructed 
that  crane's  foot  roll  which  the  Normans  knew  by 
the  name  of  a  pied  de  grue,  and  which  pretended, 
with  pleasant  disregard  of  proof,  that  his  Majesty, 
who  had  few  godlike  virtues  of  his  own,  was  de- 

3 


4  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

scended  from  that  deified  hero  Woden,  whose  virtues, 
according  to  the  bards,  were  all  of  a  godlike  quality. 
Now,  George  Louis  of  Brunswick-Lunebourg,  with 
respect  to  Woden,  was,  as  Dumas  remarks  of  a 
questionable  great-grandson  of  Charlemagne,  "  un 
descendant  bien  descendu."  The  two  had  little  in  com- 
mon, save  lack  of  true-heartedness  toward  their  wives. 

The  more  modest  builders  of  ancestral  pride,  who 
ventured  to  water  genealogical  trees  for  all  the 
branches  of  Brunswick  to  bud  upon, — before  the 
T,riaces  of  the  family  so  named  ever  hoped  to  sit  in 
the  seat  of  the  Conqueror  and  Coeur  de  Lion,  —  did 
not  dig  deeper  for  a  root,  or  go  farther  for  a  fountain- 
head  than  into  the  Italian  soil  of  the  year  1028.  Even 
then,  they  found  nothing  more  or  less  noble  than  a 
certain  Azon  d'Este,  Marquis  of  Tuscany,  who,  having 
little  of  sovereign  about  him,  except  his  will,  joined 
the  banner  of  the  Emperor  Conrad,  and  hoped  to 
make  a  fortune  in  Germany,  either  by  cutting  throats, 
or  by  subduing  hearts  whose  owners  were  heiresses  of 
unencumbered  lands. 

Azon  was  as  irresistible  in  field  and  bower  as  his 
almost  namesake,  Azor,  of  the  fairy  tale,  and  not 
only  did  this  truly  designated  soldier  of  fortune  win 
a  name  by  his  sword,  but  a  heart  by  his  tongue.  He 
was  doubly  lucky,  it  may  be  added,  in  his  bride,  for 
when  he  espoused  Cunegunda  of  Guelph,  he  married 
a  lady  who  was  not  only  wealthy,  but  who  had  the 
additional  attraction  and  advantage  of  being  the  last 
of  her  race.  The  household  was,  consequently,  a 
happy  one,  and  when  an  heir  to  its  honours  appeared 
in  the  person  of  Guelph  d'Este  the  Robust,  the  vatic- 
inating court  poet  foretold  brilliant  fortunes  for  his 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  5 

house,  yet  failed  to  see  the  culminating  brilliancy 
which  awaited  it  in  Britain,  beyond  their  ken. 

It  is  singular,  however,  to  see  how  soon  the 
Guelphs  of  Este  became  connected  with  Britain. 
This  same  Prince  "  Robust,"  of  whom  I  have  just 
spoken,  when  he  had  come  to  man's  estate,  wooed  no 
maiden  heiress  as  his  father  had  done,  but  won  the 
widowed  sister-in-law  of  our  great  Harold.  The  lady 
in  question  was  Judith,  daughter  of  Baldwin  de  Lisle, 
Count  of  Flanders,  and  widow  of  Tostic,  Earl  of 
Kent.  He  took  her  by  the  hand  while  she  was  yet 
seated  under  the  shadow  of  her  great  sorrow,  and 
looking  up  at  Guelph  the  Robust,  she  smiled  and  was 
comforted. 

Guelph  was  less  satisfactorily  provided  with  wealth 
than  the  comely  Judith,  but  in  the  days  in  which  he 
lived  provision  was  easily  made,  were  he  who  needed 
it  only  in  favour  with  the  imperial  magician,  at  whose 
word  fortunes  rose,  disappeared,  and  were  transferred 
from  one  prince  to  another  without  troubling  the  legal 
conveyancers. 

Guelph  and  Judith  had  found  this  important  favour 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Emperor  Henry  IV.,  who  forthwith 
ejected  Otho  of  Saxony  from  his  possessions  in  Bava- 
ria, and  conferred  the  same,  with  a  dreadfully  long 
list  of  rights  and  appurtenances,  on  the  newly  married 
couple. 

These  possessions  were  lost  to  the  family  by  the 
rebellion  of  Guelph's  great-grandson  against  Frederick 
Barbarossa.  The  disinherited  prince,  however,  found 
fortune  again,  by  help  of  a  marriage  and  an  English 
king.  He  had  been  previously  united  to  Maud,  the 
daughter  of  Henry  II.,  and  his  royal  father-in-law, 


6  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

with  that  benevolence  which  prevails  so  largely  in  all 
communities,  took  unwearied  pains  to, find  some  one 
who  could  afford  him  material  assistance.  He  suc- 
ceeded, and  Guelph  received,  from  another  emperor, 
the  gift  of  the  countships  of  Brunswick  and  Lune- 
bourg.  Otho  IV.  raised  them  to  duchies,  and  William 
(Guelph)  was  the  first  duke  of  the  united  possessions, 
about  the  year  1200. 

Since  that  period,  dukes  in  Brunswick  have  seldom 
failed ;  but  the  heir  to  the  title,  if  he  were  a  child 
when  he  could  lay  claim  to  his  inheritance,  usually 
found  a  wicked  uncle  in  possession,  who  affected  to 
act  upon  trust,  but  who  never  would  acknowledge  his 
ward's  majority  except  under  the  irresistible  pressure 
of  force.  Thus,  Otho  the  Child  would  probably  have 
lost  all  of  his  inheritance  except  his  claims  to  it,  but 
for  the  energetic  action  in  his  favour  exercised  by  the 
Emperor  Frederick. 

The  early  dukes  were  for  the  most  part  warlike  in 
character,  but  their  bravery  was  rather  of  a  rash  and 
excitable  character  than  heroically,  yet  calmly  firm. 
Some  of  them  were  remarkable  for  their  unhappy 
tempers,  and  acquired  names  which  unpleasantly  dis- 
tinguish them  in  this  respect.  I  may  cite,  as  instances, 
Henry,  who  was  not  only  called  the  "  young,"  from  his 
years,  and  "  the  black,"  from  his  swarthiness,  but "  the 
dog,"  because  of  his  undignified  snarling  propensities. 
So  Magnus,  who  was  surnamed  "the  collared,"  in 
allusion  to  the  gold  chain  which  hung  from  his  bull 
neck,  was  also  known  as  the  "  insolent "  and  the 
"violent,"  from  the  circumstance  that  he  was  ever 
either  insufferably  haughty  or  insanely  passionate. 

The  house   of   Brunswick  has,  at  various  times, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  7 

been  divided  into  the  branches  of  Brunswick-Lune- 
bourg,  Brunswick  -  Wolfenbiittel,  Brunswick  -  Zell, 
Brunswick-Danneberg,  etc.  These  divisions  have 
arisen  from  marriages,  transfers,  and  interchanges. 
The  first  duke  who  created  a  division  was  Duke 
Bernard,  who,  early  in  the  fifteenth  century,  ex- 
changed with  a  kinsman  his  duchy  of  Brunswick  for 
that  of  Lunebourg,  and  so  founded  the  branch  which 
bears,  or  bore,  that  double  name. 

The  sixteenth  duke,  Otho,  was  the  first  who  is 
supposed  to  have  brought  a  blot  upon  the  ducal 
scutcheon,  by  honestly  marrying  rather  according 
to  his  heart  than  his  interests.  His  wife  was  a 
simple  lady  of  Brunswick,  named  Matilda  de  Cam- 
pen.  The  two  lived  as  happily  together  as  the 
stirring  times  and  attendant  anxieties  would  allow 
them ;  and  they  paid  as  dearly  for  the  felicity  which 
they  enjoyed  as  did  their  descendant,  of  whom  I 
shall  presently  speak,  who  also  espoused  a  lady  below 
the  line  of  ducal  sovereignty,  and  who  gave  to  Eng- 
land the  second  of  her  queens  whose  feet  never  rested 
upon  English  soil. 

It  became  the  common  object  of  all  the  dukes  of 
the  various  Brunswick  branches  to  increase  the  im- 
portance of  a  house  which  had  contributed  something 
to  the  imperial  greatness  of  Germany.  They  en- 
deavoured to  accomplish  this  common  object  by 
intermarriages,  but  the  desired  consummation  was 
not  achieved  until  a  comparatively  recent  period,  — 
when  the  branch  of  Brunswick-Lunebourg  became 
electors,  and  subsequently  Kings  of  Hanover,  and 
that  of  Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel,  Sovereign  Dukes 
of  Brunswick. 


8  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

The  great-grandfather  of  George  I.,  William,  Duke 
of  Brunswick-Lunebourg,  had  seven  sons,  and  all 
these  were  dukes,  like  their  father.  On  the  decease 
of  the  latter,  they  affected  to  discover  that  if  the 
seven  heirs,  each  with  his  little  dukedom,  were  to 
marry,  the  greatness  of  the  house  would  suffer  alarm- 
ing diminution,  and  the  ducal  gem  be  ultimately 
crushed  into  numberless  glittering  but  not  very  val- 
uable fragments.  They  accordingly  came  to  a 
singular  yet  natural  conclusion.  They  determined 
that  one  alone  of  the  brothers  should  form  a  legal 
matrimonial  connection,  and  that  the  naming  of  the 
lucky  refounder  of  the  dignity  of  Brunswick  should 
be  left  to  chance  ! 

The  seven  brothers,  in  pursuance  of  their  plan, 
met  in  the  hall  of  state  in  their  deceased  father's 
mansion,  and  there  drew  lots,  or  threw  dice,  for  re- 
ports differ  on  this  point,  as  to  who  should  live  on  in 
single  blessedness,  wearing  bachelor's  buttons  for 
ever,  and  which  should  gain  the  prize,  not  of  a  wife, 
but  of  permission  to  find  one.  They  must  have 
formed  a  pictorial,  and  probably  an  excited  group,  — 
those  brothers  all  risking  cold  celibacy  that  one  might 
keep  warm  the  dignified  vitality  of  the  race.  Had 
the  gods  been  propitious,  the  lot  would  surely  have 
fallen  upon  one  who  already  wore  a  lady  in  his  heart ; 
and  there  undoubtedly  was  such  a  one  among  them 
whose  own  heart  doubtless  beat  quickly  when  "  double 
sixes  "  were  thrown  by  the  brother  who  had  but  an 
indifferent  heart  of  his  own,  and  who  had  yet  to  seek 
to  establish  an  interest  in  that  of  some  lady. 

The  lucky  prince  was  George,  the  sixth  son,  and 
he  experienced  little  difficulty  in  finding  a  princess 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  9 

willing  to  be  the  mother  of  a  new  race  of  Bruns- 
wick princes.  The  lady,  cavalierly  wooed  and  ready 
to  be  won,  was  Anne  Eleanore,  daughter  of  the  Land- 
graf  of  Hesse-Darmstadt. 

The  brothers  are  said  to  have  so  religiously  ob- 
served their  compact,  that  when  the  story  was  told 
to  the  Sultan,  Achmet  I.,  that  potentate,  who  be- 
longed to  a  race  which  knows  nothing  of  fraternal 
affection  when  the  latter  stands  in  the  way  of  inter- 
est, clapped  his  hands  with  surprise,  solemnly  declared 
that  God  was  great,  —  by  way  of  inapplicable  com- 
ment upon  the  legend  of  the  seven  brothers,  —  and 
swore  that  it  would  be  worth  while  to  go  on  foot 
from  Byzantium  to  Brunswick  only  to  look  at  them  ! 

One  of  the  sons  of  this  marriage  was  Frederick 
Ernest  Augustus,  who,  in  1685,  married  Sophia,  the 
daughter  of  Frederick  and  Elizabeth,  the  short-lived 
King  and  Queen  of  Bohemia  ;  the  latter  the  daughter 
of  James  I.  The  eldest  child  of  this  marriage  was 
George  Louis,  who  ultimately  became  King  of  Great 
Britain,  and  who  was  then  discovered,  as  I  have  said,  to 
be  a  descendant  of  Woden.  He  at  least  espoused  a 
lady  who,  by  the  mother's  side,  was  less  heroically, 
yet  not  less  honourably,  descended. 

When  Louis  XIV.  revoked  the  Edict  of  Nantes, 
the  Roman  Catholic  religion  in  France  achieved 
neither  a  less  sanguinary,  nor  a  less  melancholy,  nor 
a  less  vaunted  triumph,  than  it  did  on  the  bloody  day 
of  the  never-to-be-forgotten  St.  Bartholomew.  Those 
who  refused  to  be  converted  were  executed  or  im- 
prisoned. Some  found  safety,  with  suffering,  in 
exile  ;  and  confiscation  made  beggars  of  thousands. 
When  towns,  where  the  Protestants  were  in  the 


io  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

majority,  exhibited  tardiness  in  coming  over  to  the 
king's  way  of  thinking,  dragoons  were  ordered  thither, 
and  this  order  was  of  such  significance,  that  when  it 
was  made  known,  the  population,  to  escape  massacre, 
usually  professed  recantation  of  error  in  a  mass. 
This  daily  accession  of  thousands  who  made  abju- 
ration under  the  sword,  and  walked  thence  to  confes- 
sion and  reception  of  the  sacrament  under  an  implied 
form  in  which  they  had  no  faith,  was  described  to  the 
willingly  duped  king  by  the  ultra  bishops  as  a  miracle 
as  astounding  as  any  in  Scripture. 

Of  some  few  individuals,  places  at  court  for  them- 
selves, commissions  for  their  sons,  or  honours  which 
sometimes  little  deserved  the  name,  for  their  daugh- 
ters, made,  if  not  converts,  hypocrites.  Far  greater 
was  the  number  of  the  good  and  faithful  servants 
who  left  all  and  followed  their  Master.  With  one 
especially  I  have  here  to  do.  His  name  was  Alex- 
ander D'Esmiers,  Marquis  D'Olbreuse,  a  gallant 
Protestant  gentleman  of  Poictiers,  who  preferred 
exile  and  loss  of  estate  to  apostasy,  and  who,  when 
he  crossed  the  frontier,  a  banished  man,  brought 
small  worldly  wealth  with  him,  but  therewith  one 
child,  a  daughter,  who  was  to  him  above  all  wealth  ; 
and  to  uphold  his  dignity,  the  memory  of  being  de- 
scended from  the  gallant  Fulques  D'Esmiers,  the 
valiant  and  courteous  Lord  of  Lolbroire. 

Father  and  daughter  had  the  world  before  them 
where  to  choose,  and  like  unfortunates  who,  ejected 
from  home,  still  linger  on  the  loved  threshold,  they 
sojourned  for  a  time  on  the  northern  frontier  of  the 
kingdom,  having  their  native  country  within  sight. 
There  they  tabernacled  in  much  sorrow,  perplexity, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  1 1 

and  poverty,  but  friends  ultimately  supplied  them 
with  funds ;  and  however  sad  a  man  a  French  exile 
may  be  when  his  purse  is  empty  and  his  mind  is 
filled  with  gloomy  thoughts,  that  same  mind  speedily 
becomes  serene  when  steadied  by  the  Ballast  of  a 
heavy  purse. 

The  marquis  was  not  a  Croesus  even  now,  but  he 
found  himself  in  a  condition  to  appear  in  Brussels 
without  sacrifice  of  dignity,  and  into  the  gay  circles 
of  that  gay  city  he  led  his  daughter  Eleanora,  who 
was  met  by  warm  homage  from  the  gallants,  and 
much  criticism  at  the  hands  of  her  intimate  friends  — 
the  ladies. 

But  the  sharpest  criticism  could  not  deny  her 
beauty,  and  her  wit  and  accomplishments  won  for 
her  the  respect  and  homage  of  those  whose  allegiance 
was  better  worth  having  than  that  of  mere  petits 
mattres  with  their  stereotyped  flattery.  Eleanora, 
like  the  lady  in  Goethe's  tragedy,  loved  the  society 
and  the  good  opinion  of  wise  men,  while  she  hardly 
thought  herself  worthy  of  either ;  and,  like  Leonora 
d'Este,  she  might  have  said  : 

0  Ich  freue  mich  wenn  kluge  Manner  sprechen, 
Dass  ich  verstehen  kann  wie  sie  es  meinen." 

It  is  not  to  be  forgotten,  however,  that  Eleanora 
was  a  Frenchwoman,  and  consequently  for  being  at- 
tached to  the  wise  she  was  not  out  of  love  with  gaiety. 
She  was  the  fairest  and  the  liveliest  in  the  train  of 
the  brilliant  Duchess  of  Tarento,  and  she  was  follow- 
ing and  eclipsing  her  noble  patroness  at  a  ball,  when 
she  was  first  seen  by  a  prince  who  had  travelled  a 


12  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

little,  and  now  suddenly  felt  that  he  loved  much. 
This  prince  was  George  William,  second  son  of 
George,  Duke  of  Brunswick-Lunebourg,  and  heir  to 
the  pocket  but  sovereign  dukedom  of  Zell. 

The  heir  of  Zell  became,  what  he  had  never  been 
before,  an  honest  wooer.  It  is  said  that  he  did  not 
become  so  without  a  struggle ;  but  the  truth  is  that 
his  heart  was  for  the  first  time  seriously  inclined,  and 
he,  whose  gallantry  had  been  hitherto  remarkable 
for  its  dragooning  tone,  was  now  more  subdued  than 
Cymon  in  the  subduing  presence  of  Iphigenia.  He 
had  hated  conversation,  because  he  was  incapable  of 
sustaining  it,  but  now  love  made  him  eloquent.  He 
had  abhorred  study,  and  knew  little  of  any  other 
language  than  his  own,  but  now  he  took  to  French 
vocabularies  and  dictionaries,  and  long  before  he  had 
got  so  far  as  to  ask  Eleanora  to  hear  him  conjugate 
the  verb  aimer,  "  to  love,"  he  applied  to  her  to  inter- 
pret the  difficult  passages  he  met  with  in  books,  and 
throughout  long  summer  days  the  graceful  pair 
might  have  been  seen  sitting  together,  book  in  hand, 
interesting  and  interested,  fully  as  happy,  and  twice 
as  hopeful  as  that  other  celebrated  and  enamoured 
pair,  Paolo  and  Francesca. 

With  this  young  couple,  love's  course  ran  as  little 
smoothly,  after  a  time,  as  it  is  said  to  do  proverbially. 
George  William  soon  saw  that  something  more  of 
sterling  homage  was  expected  from  him  than  his 
becoming  the  mere  pupil  of  a  noble  but  dowerless 
maiden  from  France,  and  the  heir  to  a  duodecimo 
ducal  coronet  was  sorely  puzzled  as  to  his  proceed- 
ings. To  marriage  he  could  have  condescended 
with  alacrity,  but  unfortunately  there  was  "  a  promise 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  13 

in  bar."  With  the  view  common  to  many  co-heirs 
of  the  family,  he  had  entered  into  an  engagement 
with  his  brother,  Ernest  Augustus,  heir  of  the  chief 
of  the  house  of  Brunswick,  and  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh, 
never  to  marry.  This  concession  had  been  purchased 
at  a  certain  cost,  and  the  end  in  view  was  the  further 
enlargement  of  the  dominions  and  influence  of  the 
house  of  Brunswick.  If  George  William  should 
not  only  succeed  to  Zell,  but  should  leave  the  same 
to  a  legitimate  heir,  that  was  a  case  which  Ernest 
Augustus  would  be  disposed  to  look  upon  as  one  in- 
flicting on  him  and  his  projects  a  grievous  wrong.  A 
price  was  paid  therefore  for  the  promised  celibacy 
of  his  brother,  and  that  brother  was  now  actively 
engaged  in  meditating  as  to  how  he  might,  without 
disgrace,  break  a  promise,  and  yet  retain  the  money 
by  which  it  had  been  purchased.  His  heart  leaped 
within  him  as  he  thought  how  easily  the  whole  mat- 
ter might  be  arranged  by  a  morganatic  (or  a  dimin- 
ished, as  that  Gothic  word  implies)  marriage.  A 
marriage,  in  other  words,  with  the  left  hand ;  an 
union  sanctioned  by  the  Church,  but  so  far  disallowed 
by  the  law  that  the  children  of  such  wedlock  were,  in 
technical  terms,  infantes  nullius,  "children  of  no- 
body," and  could,  of  course,  succeed  to  nobody's 
inheritance. 

George  William  waited  on  the  Marquis  d'Olbreuse 
with  his  morganatic  offer :  the  poor  refugee  noble 
entertained  the  terms  with  much  complacency,  but 
left  his  child  to  determine  on  a  point  which  involved 
such  serious  considerations  for  herself.  They  were 
accordingly  placed  with  much  respect  at  Eleanora's 
feet,  but  she,  musing  rather  angrily  thereon,  used 


14  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

them  as  Alnaschzar  did  his  basket  of  glass  :  she 
became  angry,  and  by  an  impetuous  movement 
shivered  them  into  fragments.  She  would  not  listen 
to  the  offer. 

In  the  meantime,  these  love-passages  of  young 
George  William  were  productive  of  much  unseemly 
mirth  at  Hanover,  where  the  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh 
was  keeping  a  not  very  decorous  court.  He  was 
much  more  of  a  dragoon  than  a  bishop,  and  indeed 
his  flock  were  more  to  be  pitied  than  his  soldiers. 
The  diocese  of  Osnaburgh  was  supplied  with  bishops 
by  the  most  curious  of  rules  ;  the  rule  was  fixed  at 
the  period  of  the  peace  which  followed  the  religious 
wars  of  Germany,  and  this  rule  was,  that  as  Osna- 
burgh was  very  nearly  divided  as  to  the  number  of 
those  who  followed  either  church,  it  should  have 
alternately  a  Protestant  and  a  Romanist  bishop.  The 
necessary  result  has  been  that  Osnaburgh  has  had 
sad  scapegraces  for  her  prelates,  but  yet,  in  spite 
thereof,  has  maintained  a  religious  respectability 
which  might  be  envied  by  dioceses  blessed  with  two 
diverse  bishops  at  once,  for  ever  anathematising  the 
flocks  of  each  other  and  their  shepherds. 

The  Protestant  Prince  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh  made 
merry  with  his  ladies  at  the  wooing  of  his  honest  and 
single-minded  brother,  whom  he  wounded  to  the 
uttermost  by  scornfully  speaking  of  Eleanora  d'Ol- 
breuse  as  the  duke's  "  madame."  It  was  a  sorry 
and  unmanly  joke,  for  it  lacked  wit,  and  insulted  a 
true-hearted  woman.  But  it  had  the  effect  also  of 
arousing  a  true-hearted  man. 

George  William  had  now  succeeded  to  the  little 
dukedom  of  Zell,  not  indeed  without  difficulty,  for 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  15 

as  the  ducal  chair  had  become  vacant  while  the  next 
heir  was  absent,  paying  homage  at  Brussels  to  a  lady 
rather  than  receiving  it  from  his  lieges  in  Zell,  his 
younger  brother,  John  Frederick,  had  played  his  lord 
suzeraine  a  shabby  trick,  by  seating  himself  in  that 
chair,  and  fixing  the  ducal  parcel-gilt  coronet  on  his 
own  brows,  with  a  comic  sort  of  "  Gare  qui  le  touche !  " 
levelled  at  all  assailants  generally,  and  the  rightful 
and  fraternal  owner  particularly. 

George  William  having  toppled  down  the  usurper 
from  his  ill-earned  elevation,  and  having  bought  off 
further  treason  by  pensioning  the  traitor,  returned  to 
Brussels  with  a  renewal  of  his  former  offer.  He 
added  weight  thereto  by  the  intimation,  that  if  a 
morganatic  marriage  were  consented  to  now,  he  had 
hopes,  by  the  favour  of  the  emperor,  to  consolidate 
it  at  a  subsequent  period  by  a  legal  public  union, 
whereat  Eleanora  d'Olbreuse  should  be  recognised 
Sovereign  Duchess  of  Zell,  without  chance  of  that 
proud  title  ever  being  disputed. 

Thereupon  a  family  council  was  holden.  The  poor 
marquis  argued  as  a  father,  of  his  age,  and  few  hopes, 
might  be  pardoned  for  arguing,  —  he  thought  a  mor- 
ganatic marriage  might  be  entered  upon  without 
"  derogation "  being  laid  to  the  account  of  the  de- 
scendants of  Pulques  d'Esmiers  ;  au  reste,  he  left  all 
to  his  daughter's  love,  filial  and  otherwise.  Eleanora 
did  not  disappoint  either  sire  or  suitor  by  her  decision. 
She  made  the  first  happy  by  her  obedience,  her  lover 
by  her  gentle  concession ;  and  she  espoused  the  ar- 
dent duke  with  the  left  hand,  because  her  father 
advised  it,  her  lover  urged  it,  and  the  counsel  and  the 
suit  were  agreeable  to  the  lady,  who  professed  to  be 


16  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

influenced   by  them  to  do  that  for  which  her  own 
heart  was  guide  and  warrant. 

The  marriage  was  solemnised  in  the  month  of 
September,  1665,  the  bride  being  then  in  the  twenty- 
sixth  year  of  her  age.  With  her  new  position,  she 
assumed  the  name  and  style  of  Lady  von  Harburg, 
from  an  estate  of  the  duke's  so  called ;  and  probably 
the  last  thing  she  thought  of  among  the  dreams  con- 
jured up  by  the  new  impressions  to  which  she  was 
now  subject,  was  that  the  Lady  of  Harburg  (a  poor 
exile  from  France  for  the  sake  of  conscience  and 
religion)  should  be  the  mother  of  a  Queen  of  Eng- 
land whom  England  should  never  see,  or  the  ances- 
tress of  one  who  is  more  honoured  for  her  descent 
from  the  godly  D'Esmiers  of  Poitou,  than  if  she  could 
be  proved  to  be  a  daughter,  far  off  indeed,  and  in 
unbroken  line,  of  the  deified  and  heathenish  savage 
Woden  of  Walhalla. 

The  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh  was  merrier  than  ever  at 
what  he  styled  the  mock  marriage,  and  more  unmanly 
than  ever  in  the  coarse  jokes  he  flung  at  the  Lady 
of  Harburg.  But  even  this  marriage,  maimed  as  it 
was,  not  in  rite,  but  in  legal  sanction,  was  not  con- 
cluded without  fresh  concessions  made  by  the  duke 
to  the  bishop,  in  order  to  secure  to  the  latter  an 
undivided  inheritance  of  Brunswick,  Hanover,  and 
Zell.  His  mirth  was  founded  on  the  idea  that  he 
had  provided  .for  himself  and  his  heirs,  and  left  the 
children  of  his  brother,  should  any  be  born,  and  these 
survive  him,  to  nourish  their  left-handed  dignity  on 
the  smallest  possible  means.  The  first  heiress  to 
such  dignity,  and  to  much  heart-crushing  and  unde- 
served sorrow,  soon  appeared  to  gladden  for  a  brief 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  17 

season,  to  sadden  for  long  and  weary  years,  the  hearts 
of  her  parents.  Sophia  Dorothea  was  born  on  the 
1 5th  September,  1666.  Her  names  imply,  "Wisdom 
the  gift  of  God ; "  and  if  she  had  not  possessed  in  after 
life  that  wisdom,  whose  commencement  is  established 
in  the  fear  of  God,  her  fate  would  have  been  as  in- 
supportable as  it  was  undeserved. 

Her  birth  was  hailed  with  more  than  ordinary  joy 
in  the  little  court  of  her  parents  :  at  that  of  the  bishop 
it  was  productive  of  some  mirth  and  a  few  bad  epi- 
grams. The  bishop  had  taken  provident  care  that 
neither  heir  nor  heiress  should  affect  his  succession 
to  what  should  have  been  their  own  inheritance,  and 
simply  looking  upon  Sophia  Dorothea  as  a  child 
whose  existence  did  not  menace  a  diminution  of  the 
prospective  greatness  of  his  house,  he  tolerated  the 
same  with  an  ineffably  gracious  condescension. 


CHAPTER   II. 

WIVES    AND    FAVOURITES 

The  Single  Blessing  Allowed  to  Women  —  A  Ducal  Household  — 
Elevation  in  Rank  of  the  Mother  of  Sophia  Dorothea  —  Births 
and  Deaths  —  A  Lover  for  Sophia  —  The  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh 
an  Imitator  of  the  Grand  Monarque  —  Two  Successful  Female 
Adventurers  at  Osnaburgh. 

IT  is  the  remark  of  Madame  de  Stael,  I  think,  — 
a  lady,  by  the  way,  whom  the  Messrs.  Goncourt 
in  their  one-sided  history  of  French  society  have 
described  as  having  "  the  face  of  a  lion ;  purple, 
pimpled,  and  dry-lipped,  rude  in  body  as  in  ideas, 
masculine  in  gesture,  uttering  in  the  voice  of  a  boy 
her  vigorous  and  swelling  phraseology  "  —  nothing 
of  which  would  be  believed  by  those  who  have  seen 
her  only  in  Girard's  picture,  holding  in  her  hand  that 
little  branch  without  which  she  knew  not  how  to  be 
eloquent ;  it  is,  I  repeat,  the  remark  of  Madame 
de  Stael,  that  society,  and  perhaps  even  Providence, 
vouchsafes  but  a  single  blessing  to  women,  —  that 
of  being  loved  after  marriage.  Whether  this  be 
true  or  not,  the  blessing  here  named  appears  to  have 
been  the  undisputed  possession  of  the  Lady  of 
Harburg. 

Such  a  household  as  that  maintained  in  sober  hap- 
piness and  freedom  from  anxiety  by  herself  and  the 

18 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  19 

duke  was  a  rare  sight,  if  not  in  Germany,  at  least  in 
German  courts.  The  duke  was  broadly  ridiculed 
because  of  his  faithful  affection  for  one  who  was 
worthy  of  all  the  truth  and  esteem  which  a  true- 
hearted  wife  could  claim.  He  could  well  afford  to 
allow  the  unprincipled  to  ridicule  what  they  could 
not  realise;  and  he  held,  with  more  honesty  than 
ever  distinguished  knight  in  chivalrous  times,  that  if 
it  were  disgraceful  to  commit  a  breach  of  faith  even 
in  gaming,  it  was  doubly  so  to  be  guilty  of  such 
treachery  in  marriage. 

It  may  well  be  imagined  how  hilariously  this  senti- 
ment was  contemplated  by  the  princes  of  Germany, 
who  aped  Louis  XIV.  only  in  his  vices  and  his  arro- 
gance, and  who,  while  professing  to  be  as  wise  as 
Solomon,  followed  the  example  of  that  monarch  only 
in  the  matter  of  concubines. 

The  only  fault  ever  brought  by  the  bitterest  of 
the  enemies  of  the  wife  of  the  Duke  of  Zell  against 
that  unexceptionable  lady  was,  that  she  was  over- 
fond  of  nominating  natives  of  France  to  little  places 
in  her  husband's  little  court.  Considering  that  the 
Germans,  who  looked  upon  her  as  an  intruder,  would 
not  recognise  her  as  having  become  naturalised  by 
marriage,  it  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that  she 
gathered  as  much  of  France  around  her  as  she  could 
assemble  in  another  land.  This  done,  her  husband 
approving,  and  her  child  creating  for  her  a  new 
world  of  emotions  and  delights,  she  let  those  who 
envied  her  rail  on,  having  neither  time  nor  inclination 
to  heed  them. 

But  the  sunshine  was  not  all  unclouded.  Three 
other  children  were  the  fruit  of  this  marriage,  whose 


20  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

early  deaths  were  deplored  as  so  many  calamities. 
Their  mother  lived  long  enough  to  deplore  that 
Sophia  Dorothea  had  survived  them.  This  was  the 
real  sorrow  of  the  mother's  life ;  and  stupendous 
indeed  must  be  the  maternal  affliction  which  is  based 
upon  the  fact  that  a  beloved  and  only  child  does  not 
lie  coffined  at  her  parents'  feet. 

The  merits  of  the  mother  won,  as  they  deserved 
to  do,  increase  of  esteem  and  affection  on  the  part 
of  the  duke.  His  most  natural  wish  was  to  raise 
her  to  a  rank  equal  to  his  own,  as  far  as  a  mere 
name  could  make  assertion  of  such  equality.  This, 
however,  could  only  be  effected  gradually,  and  with 
a  world  of  trouble,  delay,  disappointment,  petitioning, 
and  expense.  It  was  thought  a  wonderful  act  of 
condescension  on  the  part  of  the  emperor,  that  he 
gave  his  imperial  sanction  to  the  elevation  of  the 
Lady  of  Harburg  to  the  rank  and  title  of  Countess 
of  Wilhelmsburg. 

The  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh  was  harder  to  treat  with 
than  the  emperor.  He  bound  down  his  brother  by 
stringent  engagements,  solemnly  engrossed  in  lengthy 
phrases,  guarding  against  all  mistake  by  horribly 
technical  tautology,  to  agree  that  the  encircling  his 
wife  with  the-  coronet  of  a  countess  bestowed  upon 
her  no  legal  rights,  and  conferred  no  shadow  of 
legitimacy,  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  on  the  children 
•of  the  marriage,  actual  or  prospective.  For  such 
children,  modest  yet  sufficient  provision  was  secured  ; 
but  they  were  never  to  dream  of  claiming  cousinship 
with  the  alleged  better-born  descendants  of  Henry 
the  Dog,  or  Magnus  the  Irascible. 

George  William  and  Eleanora  mildly  acquiesced, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  21 

and  the  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh  turned  the  key  of  his 
family  muniment-chest,  with  the  comfortable  feeling 
of  a  man  who  has  fenced  his  dignity  and  prospects 
with  a  safeguard  which  could  not  possibly  be  vio- 
lated. George  William  looked  at  his  wife  with  a 
smile,  and  uttered,  in  something  of  the  fashion  of 
the  prophetic  persons  in  Shakespeare's  tragedy, 
"  Hail !  Countess  of  Wilhelmsburg,  Duchess  of  Zell, 
hereafter ! " 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply,  of  course,  that  this  was 
more  than  mentally  uttered.  That  the  idea  possessed 
the  duke,  and  that  he  acted  upon  it  quite  as  much 
as  if  he  had  given  it  expression,  and  bound  himself 
by  its  utterance,  is  clearly  distinguishable  by  his  sub- 
sequent action.  He  was  resolved  not  to  rest  until 
his  wife  should  also  be  his  duchess.  A  "star- 
chamber  matter  "  has  been  made  of  many  a  simpler 
thing,  but  a  smile  is  allowable  when  we  read  of  the 
fact  that  the  Estates  of  Germany  gravely  discussed 
the  subject  as  to  whether  a  worthy  wife  should  be 
permitted  to  wear  the  title  which  was  commonly 
worn  by  her  husband.  This  had  once  before  been 
permitted  to  a  single  lady,  who  had  given  her  hand, 
or,  to  speak  more  in  the  spirit  of  Brunswick  court 
lawyers,  whose  hand  had  been  graciously  taken  by 
a  Brunswick  duke.  In  the  case  furnishing  a  prece- 
dent, the  lady  in  question  was  at  least  a  native  of 
the  duchy ;  but  in  the  present  case  a  great  difficulty 
presented  itself,  the  lady  being  a  foreigner  with 
nothing  ennobling  her  but  her  virtues.  The  Estates 
thought  long,  and  adjourned  often  before  they  came 
to  a  tardy  and  reluctant  conclusion,  by  which  the 
boon  sought  was  at  length  conceded.  When  the 


22  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

emperor  added  his  consent,  there  was  many  a  prin- 
cess in  the  various  German  courts  who  became 
tremblingly  sensible  that  Teutonic  greatness  had 
been  shattered  for  ever. 

The  concession  made  by  the  Estates,  and  the 
sanction  superadded  by  the  emperor,  were,  however, 
only  obtained  upon  the  military  bishop  withholding 
all  opposition.  The  princely  prelate  was,  in  fact, 
bought  off.  Again  his  muniment-box  was  unlocked  ; 
once  more  he  and  his  staff  of  lawyers  were  deep  in 
parchments,  and  curious  in  the  geography  of  terri- 
torial maps  and  plans.  The  result  of  much  dry  labour 
and  heavy  speculation  was  an  agreement  entered 
into  by  the  two  brothers.  The  Duke  of  Zell  con- 
tracted that  the  children  of  his  marriage  with  the 
daughter  of  the  Poitevin  marquis  should  inherit  only 
his  private  property,  and  the  empty  title  of  Counts, 
or  Countesses,  of  Wilhelmsburg.  The  territory  of 
Zell,  with  other  estates  added  to  the  sovereign  duke- 
dom, was  to  pass  to  the  prince-bishop  or  his  heirs. 
On  these  terms  Eleanora  of  Olbreuse,  Lady  of 
Harburg  and  Countess  of  Wilhelmsburg,  became 
Duchess  of  Zell. 

"Ah !"  exclaimed  the  very  apostolic  bishop  to  the 
dissolute  disciples  at  his  court,  on  the  night  that  the 
family  compact  was  made  an  accomplished  fact,  "my 
brother's  French  madame  is  not  a  jot  the  more  his 
wife,  for  being  duchess,"  —  which  was  true,  for 
married  is  married,  and  there  is  no  comparative 
degree  of  intensity  which  can  be  applied  to  the  cir- 
cumstance. "But  she  has  a  dignity  the  more,  and 
therewith  may  madame  rest  content "  —  which  was 
not  true,  for  no  new  title  could  add  dignity  to  a 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  23 

woman  like  the  wife  of  Duke  George  William.  As 
to  being  content,  she  knew  not  what  it  was  to 
lack  content  until  after  the  period  when  Brunswick 
greeted  her  by  an  empty  name. 

As  yet,  however,  all  went  —  if  I  may  employ 
a  simile  much  cracked  by  wear  —  all  went  as  merry 
as  a  marriage-bell ;  save  when  the  knell  tolled  for 
the  three  happy  children  who  were  summoned  early 
to  occupy  graves  over  which  their  mistaken  parents 
long  and  deeply  mourned.  Sophia  Dorothea  was 
the  sole  daughter  then  of  their  house,  if  not  of  their 
hearts,  and  she  was  a  "thing  of  beauty,"  beloved 
by  all,  because  of  her  worth,  and  flattered  by  none, 
because  she  was  nobody's  heiress. 

Of  the  personal  history  of  her  youth,  the  most 
salient  circumstance  is  that,  when  she  was  yet  but 
seven  years  old,  she  had  for  an  occasional  playfellow 
in  the  galleries  and  gardens  of  Zell  and  Calenberg,  a 
handsome  lad,  Swedish  by  birth,  but  German  by 
descent,  whose  name  was  Philip  Christopher  von 
Konigsmark.  He  was  in  Zell  for  the  purpose  of 
education,  and  many  of  his  vacation  hours  were 
spent  with  the  child  of  George  William,  who  was 
his  father's  friend.  When  gossips  saw  the  two  hand- 
some children,  buoyant  of  spirit,  beaming  with  health, 
and  ignorant  of  care,  playing  hand  in  hand  at  sports 
natural  to  their  age,  those  gossips  prophesied,  "in 
bated  breath,"  of  future  marriage.  They  could  fore- 
tell "  circumstances,"  like  our  laureate,  and  prattle,  in 
reference  to  these  happy  children,  of  — 

"  Two  lovers  whisp'ring  by  an  orchard  wall, 
Two  lives  bound  fast  in  one  with  golden  ease : 


24  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

Two  graves  grass-green  beside  a  gray  church  tower, 
Wash'd  with  still  rains  and  daisy  blossomed  ;  "  — 

but  their  "circumstance"  was  as  aerial  as  that  of 
the  poet,  and  they  could  not  foresee  the  dark  reality, 
—  one  child  in  a  dungeon,  the  other  in  a  bloody 
grave. 

Indeed,  their  speculation  in  this  direction  had  soon 
no  food  whereon  to  live,  for  the  young  Konigsmark 
was  speedily  withdrawn  from  Zell,  and  Sophia  bloomed 
on  alone,  or  with  other  companions,  good,  graceful, 
fair,  accomplished,  and  supremely  happy. 

But  even  daughter  as  she  was  of  a  left-handed 
marriage,  there  was  hanging  to  her  name  a  dower 
sufficiently  costly  to  dazzle  and  allure  even  princely 
suitors.  To  one  of  these  she  was  betrothed  before 
she  was  ten  years  old.  The  suitor  was  a  soldier  and 
a  prince,  and  although  not  so  much  older  than  his 
little  lady  as  Richard  II.  was  when,  at  the  age  of 
nine  and  twenty,  he  espoused  the  French  Princess 
Isabella  of  Valois,  with  no  more  years  upon  her  sunny 
brow  than  nine,  —  a  child  whom  he  married  politically, 
loved  paternally,  and  was  beloved  by  filially,  as  he 
well  merited,  —  although  the  disparity  was  not  so 
great,  it  was  enough  to  bar  anything  beyond  betroth- 
ment. 

The  princely  lover  in  question  was  the  cousin  of 
the  quasi  princely  lady,  Augustus  Frederick,  Crown 
Prince  of  Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.  This  crown  prince 
was  allured  by  the  beaux  yeux  de  la  casette  of 
the  little  heiress.  If  Mr.  Justice  Alderson  takes 
license  to  make  puns  when  the  court  is  dull  and 
cases  heavy,  it  may  be  pardoned  a  poor  chronicler,  if 
he  marks  down  in  his  record,  that  the  Crown  Prince 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  25 

of  Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel  was  mightily  moved  by 
the  crowns  set  down  as  the  dower  which  was  to  go 
with  the  hand  of  the  duke's  daughter.  These  were 
little  better  than  half-crowns  after  all,  —  thalers  worth 
about  three  shillings  each,  and  of  them  one  hundred 
thousand.  The  lover  possibly  exclaimed  as  Boileau's 
celebrated  gentleman  did : 

"  Elle  a  cent  mille  vertus  en  louis  bien  compte'es." 

But  for  louis  here  were  only  thalers ;  and  a  hundred 
thousand  thalers  is  at  the  most  but  fifteen  thousand 
pounds  sterling,  but  an  humble  dower  for  a  duke's 
only  daughter.  In  the  country  where  merchants  are 
"  princes,"  sires  give  as  much  to  each  of  a  whole  circle 
of  daughters  ;  but  George  William  was  only  Duke  of 
Zell. 

In  the  meantime  the  affianced  lover  had  to  prove 
himself,  by  force  of  arms,  worthy  of  his  lady  and  her 
fortune.  The  latter,  at  least,  was  hardly  worth  the 
risk  he  ran  to  show  himself  deserving,  and  which 
deprived  him  of  that  in  honour  of  which  he  put  him- 
self in  peril.  At  the  time  of  which  I  am  speaking, 
as  much  murderous  bad  ambition  was  abroad  in  the 
world  as  there  now  is  heaping  a  mountain  of  responsi- 
bility for  murder  upon  the  head  of  the  late  Tsar 
Nicholas.  One  of  the  consequences  thereof  was  the 
noted  siege  of  Philipsburg,  in  the  year  1676.  Thither 
repaired  the  chivalrous  Augustus  of  Brunswick-Wolf- 
enbiittel. He  went  to  the  bloody  work  proudly, 
plume  in  helm,  scarf  on  breast,  and  all  the  insignia 
of  greatness  about  him.  There  was  nothing  in  his 
nature  of  that  humility,  so  selfish  in  aspect,  which 


26  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

distinguishes  Russian  officers  going  into  action, — 
gallant  leaders,  who  deck  themselves  in  the  great- 
coats of  private  soldiers,  in  order  to  avoid  mortal 
honour  from  those  opponents  who  seek  to  cross 
swords  with  men  supposed  to  be  worthy  of  their 
steel.  This  novel  phasis  of  strategy,  of  Russian 
introduction,  was  not  yet  known  in  the  days  of  Augus- 
tus of  Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel.  He  was  accordingly 
content  to  take  his  chance  honestly  and  valiantly, 
and  he  bore  himself  with  a  dignity  and  daring  which 
entitled  him  to  respect.  With  regret  it  must  be 
added,  that  the  fortune  of  war  deprived  him  of  that 
which  he  hoped  to  reap  with  the  hand  of  Sophia 
Dorothea.  A  fatal  bullet  slew  him  suddenly  :  a  brief 
notice  in  a  despatch  was  his  soldierly  requiem,  and 
when  the  affianced  child-bride  was  solemnly  informed 
by  circumstance  of  hof-marshal  that  her  lord  was 
slain  and  her  heart  was  free,  she  was  too  young  to 
be  sorry,  and  too  unconscious  to  be  glad.  But  glad 
she  would  not  have  been,  had  she  known  that  by  the 
slaying  of  one  lover  at  Philipsburg  she  was  ultimately 
to  gain  another,  the  gain  of  whom  would  prove  a 
bitter  loss. 

Meanwhile,  the  two  courts  of  the  Bishop  of  Osna- 
burgh  and  the  Duke  of  Zell  continued  to  present  a 
striking  contrast.  At  the  latter,  harmony  and  re- 
spectability reigned  in  common  :  at  that  of  the  bishop 
there  was  little  of  either ;  even  the  ostentatious  pat- 
ronage bestowed  on  literature  was  not  respectable, 
because  it  was  ostentatious.  It  was,  however,  the 
best  feature  of  which  the  court  had  to  boast. 

The  bishop  was  one  of  those  men  who  think  them- 
selves nothing  unless  they  are  imitating  some  greater 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  27 

man,  not  in  his  virtues  but  his  vices.  There  was  one 
man  in  Europe  whom  Ernest  Augustus  described  as 
a  "paragon,"  and  that  distinguished  personage  was 
Louis  XIV.  The  vices,  extravagance,  the  pomposity 
of  the  great  king,  were  the  dear  delights  of  the  little 
prince.  As  Louis  neglected  his  wife,  so  Ernest 
Augustus  disregarded  his.  Fortunately,  Sophia,  the 
wife  of  the  latter,  had  resources  in  her  mind,  which 
made  her  consider  with  exemplary  indifference  the 
faithlessness  of  her  lord.  Assuredly,  his,  like  Israel's 
incense,  was  too  often  cast  upon  unworthy  shrines, 
and  the  goddesses  who  received  it  were  in  every 
respect  unworthy  of  the  homage.  Every  prince  is 
not  a  Pericles,  and  if  he  were,  he  would  find  that 
every  Lais,  for  being  the  favourite  of  a  prince,  is  not 
necessarily  as  intellectually  gifted  as  the  extravagant 
and  accomplished  lady  of  old. 

And  yet,  as  far  as  regards  a  particular  sort  of 
extravagance  and  accomplishment,  perhaps  few  ladies 
could  have  surpassed  those  known  at  Hanover  as 
Catherine  and  Elizabeth  von  Meissengen.  Introduced 
to  a  court  of  ill-dressed  ladies,  they  set  the  fashion 
of  a  witchery  of  costume,  remarkable  for  its  taste, 
and  sometimes  for  outraging  it.  Had  they  come 
straight  from  the  euphuistic  and  gallantly  attired 
circle  of  the  H6tel  de  Rambouillet,  they  could  not 
have  been  nicer  of  phrase  nor  more  resplendent  of 
garb.  They  possessed,  too,  the  great  talent  of 
Madame  de  Sillery  Genlis,  and  were  inimitable  in 
their  ability  and  success  in  getting  up  little  fetes,  at 
home  or  abroad,  in  the  salon,  or  al  fresco,  —  formal 
and  full-dressed,  or  rustic  and  easy,  —  where  major- 
generals  were  costumed  as  agricultural  swains,  and 


28  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

ladies  of  honour  as  nymphs  or  dairymaids,  with 
costumes  rural  of  fashioning,  but  as  resplendent 
and  costly  as  silkman  and  jeweller  could  make 
them. 

These  young  ladies  came  to  court  precisely  as 
knights  used  to  do  of  old,  —  to  push  their  fortunes, 
—  but  not  exactly  after  a  knightly  fashion.  They 
hoped  in  some  way  to  serve  the  sovereign  ;  or,  failing 
him,  to  be  agreeable  to  the  Crown  Prince  George 
Louis  (afterward  George  I.  of  England).  But  even 
the  crown  prince,  a  little  and  not  an  attractive  person, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  bishop,  seemed  for  a  time  a 
flight  above  them.  They  could  wait  a  new  oppor- 
tunity; for  as  for  defeat  in  their  aspirations,  they 
would  not  think  of  it.  They  had  the  immense  power 
of  those  persons  who  are  possessed  by  one  single 
idea,  and  who  are  under  irresistible  compulsion  to 
carry  it  out  to  reality.  They  could  not  reach  the 
prince-bishop  or  his  heir,  and  accordingly  they  directed 
the  full  force  of  their  enchantments  at  two  very 
unromantic-looking  personages,  the  private  tutors  of 
the  young  princes  of  Hanover.  They  were  soon 
mighty  at  Greek  particles,  learned  in  the  aorists, 
fluent  on  the  digamma,  and  familiar  with  the  myster- 
ies of  the  differential  calculus. 

Catherine  and  Elizabeth  von  Meissengen  opened  a 
new  grammar  before  their  learned  pundits,  the  Herrn 
Busche  and  Platen  ;  and  truth  to  tell,  the  philoso- 
phers were  nothing  loath  to  pursue  the  new  study 
taught  by  such  professors.  When  this  educational 
course  had  come  to  a  close,  the  public  recognised  at 
once  its  aim,  quality,  and  effects,  by  learning  that 
the  sage  preceptors  had  actually  married  two  of  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  29 

liveliest  and  lightest-footed  of  girls  who  had  ever 
danced  a  branle  at  the  balls  in  Brunswick.  The 
wives,  on  first  appearing  in  public  after  their  mar- 
riage, looked  radiant  with  joy.  The  tutors  wore, 
about  them  an  air  of  constraint,  as  if  they  thought 
the  world  needed  an  apology,  by  way  of  explaining 
how  two  elders  had  permitted  themselves  to  be  van- 
quished by  a  brace  of  Susannas.  Their  ideas  were 
evidently  confused,  but  they  took  courage  as  people 
cheerfully  laughed,  though  they  may  have  lost  it 
again  on  discovering  that  they  had  been  drawn  into 
matrimony  by  two  gracefully  graceless  nymphs,  whose 
sole  object  was  to  use  their  spouses  as  stepping- 
stones  to  a  higher  greatness. 

There  must  have  been  many  attendant  advantages 
in  connection  with  such  an  object,  or  the  two  married 
philosophers  would  hardly  have  worn  the  air  of  con- 
tent which  they  put  on  as  soon  as  they  saw  the  aim 
of  their  estimable  wives,  and  felt  the  gain  thence 
accruing. 

Elizabeth  von  Meissengen,  the  wife  of  Platen,  was 
the  true  mistress  of  the  situation.  Platen,  princi- 
pally through  her  intrigues,  had  been  appointed  prime 
minister  of  the  sovereign  bishop.  The  business  to 
be  transacted  by  potentate  and  premier  could  not 
have  been  very  extensive,  —  but  it  was  serious  on 
one  point,  seeing  that  that  had  reference  to  the 
question  of  the  succession  of  the  house  of  Brunswick 
to  the  throne  of  Great  Britain.  But  as  this  question 
was  not  one  of  a  "  much  vexed  "  character,  the  time 
passed  by  Platen  with  his  sovereign  master  afforded 
him  ample  leisure  to  talk  of  his  wife,  praise  her  polit- 
ical abilities,  and  overeulogise  her,  as  men  and  women 


30  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

do  the  consorts  for  whom  they  have  no  cause  to 
bear  an  overheaped  measure  of  respect. 

The  prince-bishop  felt  his  curiosity  excited  to  be- 
^hold  and  study  more  nearly  this  phoenix  of  a  woman. 
The  curiosity  of  such  a  sovereign  a  loyal  subject 
would,  of  course,  be  eager  to  gratify.  It  was,  there- 
fore, the  most  natural  of  consequences  that  Von 
Platen  should  lead  his  lady  to  his  master's  feet, 
though  it  perhaps  was  not  so  natural  that  he  should 
leave  her  there  to  "  improve "  the  position  thus 
reached. 

The  lady  lost  no  time  in  justifying  all  that  her  hus- 
band had  advanced  in  warranty  of  her  talent,  skill, 
and  willingness  to  use  them  for  the  advantage  of  the 
bishop  and  his  dominions ;  the  powerful  prelate  was 
enchanted  with  her,  —  enchanted  with  her  in  every 
sense.  Were  I  treating  of  mythic,  classical,  or 
romantic  mediaeval  days,  it  would  just  be  barely 
possible  to  throw  a  poetical  feeling  round  such  a 
"tableau"  as  that  presented  by  the  bishop  and  the 
diplomatic  Madame  von  Platen.  But  "  Hebe  in  Her- 
cules's  arms  "  is  very  well  in  statuary,  and  "  Dido  with 
./Eneas  "  may  be  attractive  on  canvas,  while  the  love 
adventures  of  Arthur,  and  the  adventurous  and  lib- 
eral love  of  Guinevere  may  amuse  us  in  ballads,  — 
but  there  is  a  light  of  reality  which  does  not  dazzle 
us  like  the  light  of  romance.  Full  in  such  illumina- 
tion is  revealed  to  us  the  picture  of  Bishop  Ernest 
and  Elizabeth  von  Platen.  A  more  shameless  couple 
never  stood  at  the  tribunal  of  judgment ;  but  if  they 
were  not  ashamed  of  their  own  iniquity,  therein  lies 
no  reason  why  we  should  detail  it.  Quite  sufficient 
will  it  be  to  remark,  that  it  had  its  reward ;  and  if 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  31 

the  wages  of  sin,  in  this  case,  were  not  literally  a 
death,  they  were  at  least  quite  as  retributive,  and 
not  the  more  welcome. 

When  Alcides  submitted  to  take  the  distaff  of 
Omphale,  and  uncomplainingly  endured  to  be  buffeted 
by  her  slipper,  he  only  afforded  an  illustration  of 
how  power  may  playfully  make  itself  the  slave  of 
weakness,  —  there  is  even  something  pretty  in  the 
picture.  It  is  strong  man  yielding  to  womanly  in- 
fluence; and  the  picture  only  ceases  to  be  heroic, 
without  ceasing  to  be  of  an  amiable  aspect,  when  the 
chief  character  is  poor,  sickly  Cowper  winding  up 
cotton  in  reels  for  good  Mrs.  Unwin. 

But  the  obese  Ernest  Augustus  in  the  hands  of 
the  youthful  Elizabeth  von  Platen,  reminds  me  of 
nothing  so  much  as  of  the  "  Lion  in  Love,"  de- 
servedly having  his  claws  clipped  by  the  clever  object 
of  his  ridiculous  adoration  :  the  fate  of  the  lion  was 
also  that  of  the  bishop.  He  was  not,  indeed,  a  man 
of  weak  mind,  but  that  of  Madame  von  Platen  was 
still  stronger.  He  could  rule  his  minister,  but  not 
his  minister's  wife  ;  and  most  appropriately  might  he 
have  made  paraphrastic  application  of  the  line  in 
Othello,  and  have  declared  his  consciousness  with  a 
sigh,  that  his  "general's  wife  was  now  the  general." 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    BRUNSWICKER   IN    ENGLAND 

Prince  Augustus  of  Wolfenbuttel,  the  Accepted  Lover  of  Sophia — 
Superstition  of  the  Duke  of  Zell  —  Intrigues  of  Madame  von 
Platen  —  A  Rival  Lover  —  Prince  George  Louis :  Makes  an 
Offer  of  Marriage  to  Princess  Anne — Policy  of  the  Prince  of 
Orange — Prince  George  in  England:  Festivities  on  Account  of 
His  Visit  —  Execution  of  Lord  Stafford  —  Illness  of  Prince 
Rupert  —  The  Bill  of  Exclusion,  and  the  Duke  of  York  at  Holy- 
rood  —  Probable  Succession  of  the  House  of  Brunswick  —  Prince 
George  Recalled  —  Successful  Intrigues  of  Sophia,  Wife  of 
Ernest  —  A  Group  for  an  Artist  —  Ill-fated  Marriage  of  Sophia 
—  Elizabeth,  Queen  of  Bohemia  —  "  Goody  Palsgrave  "  —  The 
Electress  Sophia,  and  Her  Intellectual  Skirmishes. 

WHILE  all  was  loose  and  lively  at  the  court  of  the 
bishop,  the  daily  routine  of  simple  pleasures  and 
duties  alone  marked  the  course  of  events  at  the  mod- 
est court  of  the  Duke  of  Zell.  The  monotony  of  the 
latter  locality  was,  however,  agreeably  interrupted  by 
the  arrival  there  of  his  Serene  Highness  Prince  Au- 
gustus William  of  Wolfenbuttel.  He  had  just  been 
edified  by  what  he  had  witnessed  during  his  brief 
sojourn  in  the  episcopal  circle  of  Osnaburgh,  where 
he  had  seen  two  ladies  exercising  a  double  influence, 
Madame  von  Platen  ruling  her  husband  and  his  mas- 
ter, while  her  sister,  Caroline  von  Busche,  was 
equally  obeyed  by  her  consort  and  his  Highness 
George  Louis,  the  bishop's  son. 

32 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  33 

Prince  Augustus  of  Wolfenbuttel  was  the  brother 
of  that  early  suitor  of  the  little  Sophia  Dorothea, 
who  had  met  a  soldier's  death  at  the  siege  of  Philips- 
burg.  He  was,  like  his  brother,  not  so  rich  in  gold 
pieces  as  in  good  qualities,  and  was  more  wealthy  in 
virtues  than  in  acres.  He  was  a  bachelor  prince, 
with  a  strong  inclination  to  lay  down  his  bachelor- 
ship, at  the  feet  of  a  lady  who  would,  by  addition  of 
her  dowry,  increase  the  greatness  and  material  com- 
forts of  both.  Not  that  Augustus  of  Wolfenbuttel 
was  mercenary;  he  was  simply  prudent.  A  little 
princely  state  in  Germany  costs  a  great  deal  to  main- 
tain, and  when  the  errant  prince  went  forth  in  search 
of  a  lady  with  a  dower,  his  last  thought  was  to  offer 
himself  to  one  who  had  no  heart,  or  who  had  no  place 
in  his  own.  If  there  was  some  system,  a  little 
method,  and  an  air  of  business  about  the  passion 
and  principle  of  the  puissant  Prince  Augustus,  some- 
thing thereof  must  be  laid  to  the  charge  of  the 
times,  and  a  little  to  the  princely  matter-of-fact  good 
sense :  he  is  a  wise  and  a  merciful  man,  who,  before 
he  comes  to  conclusions  with  a  lady  on  the  chapter 
of  matrimony,  first  weighs  prospects,  and  establishes, 
as  far  as  in  him  lies,  a  security  of  sunshine. 

Augustus  of  Wolfenbuttel  had  long  suspected  that 
the  sun  of  his  future  home  was  to  be  found  at 
Zell,  and  in  the  person  of  his  young  cousin  Sophia 
Dorothea.  Even  yet  tradition  exists  among  Bruns- 
wick maidens  as  to  the  love-passages  of  this  accom- 
plished and  handsome  young  couple.  Those  passages 
have  been  enlarged  for  the  purposes  of  romance 
writers,  but  divested  of  all  exaggeration  there  re- 
mains enough  to  prove,  as  touching  this  pair,  that 


34  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

they  were  well  assorted  both  as  to  mind  and  person ; 
that  their  inclinations  were  toward  each  other ;  and 
that  they  were  worthy  of  a  better  fate  than  that 
which  fell  upon  the  honest  and  warm  affection  which 
reigned  in  the  hearts  of  both. 

The  love  of  these  cousins  was  not  the  less  ardent 
for  the  fact  of  its  being  partially  discouraged.  The 
Duke  of  Zell  looked  upon  the  purpose  of  Prince 
Augustus  with  an  unfavourable  eye.  He  had  indeed 
nothing  to  object  to  the  suitor's  person,  character, 
position,  or  prospects.  He  did  not  deny  that  with 
such  a  husband  his  daughter  might  secure  that  which 
M.  Necker's  daughter  has  designated  as  woman's 
sole  blessing,  happiness  in  the  married  state;  but 
then  that  suitor  was  the  successor  of  a  dead  brother, 
who  had  been  the  prosecutor  of  a  similar  suit.  The 
simple-minded  duke  had  an  unfeigned  superstitious 
awe  of  the  new  lover ;  and  the  idea  of  consenting  to 
a  match  under  the  circumstances  as  they  presented 
themselves,  seemed  to  him  tantamount  to  a  species  of 
sacrilege,  outraging  the  manes  and  memory  of  the 
defunct  kinsman. 

But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  the  duke  loved  his 
daughter,  and  the  daughter  assuredly  loved  Augustus 
of  Wolfenbiittel ;  and,  added  thereto,  the  good  Duch- 
ess Eleanora  was  quite  disposed  to  see  the  cherished 
union  accomplished,  and  to  bestow  her  benediction 
upon  the  well-favoured  pair.  Altogether,  there  were 
strong  odds  against  the  opposition  of  a  father,  which 
rested  on  no  better  foundation  than  a  tripod,  if  one 
may  so  speak,  of  whim,  doubt,  and  a  fear  of  ghosts. 
He  was  influenced,  possibly,  by  his  extensive  reading 
in  old  legendary  ballad-lore,  metrical  and  melancholy 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  35 

German  romances,  the  commonest  incident  in  which 
is  the  interruption  of  a  marriage  ceremony  by  a 
spiritual  personage  professing  priority  of  right. 

It  was  not  without  infinite  trouble  that  the  lovers 
and  the  duchess  succeeded  in  breaking  down  the  oppo- 
sition of  the  duke.  Even  when  his  reluctant  consent 
had  been  given,  he  was  everlastingly  bringing  for- 
ward the  subject  of  the  departed  suitors,  until  his 
remarks  became  as  wearisome  as  the  verses  of  the 
German  author,  who  wrote  a  poem  of  three  hundred 
lines  in  length,  all  about  pigs,  and  every  word  of 
which  began  with  the  letter  P. 

The  opposition  to  the  marriage  was  not,  however, 
all  surmounted  when  the  antagonism  of  the  duke  had 
been  successfully  overcome.  A  father  may  be  ac- 
counted for  something  even  in  a  German  dukedom  ; 
but  a  mistress  may  be  stronger,  and  Madame  von 
Platen  has  the  credit  of  having  carried  out  her  oppo- 
sition to  the  match  to  a  very  successful  issue. 

It  is  asserted  of  this  clever  lady,  that  she  was  the 
first  who  caused  the  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh  thoroughly 
to  comprehend  that  Sophia  Dorothea  would  form  a 
very  desirable  match  for  his  son  George  Louis.  The 
young  lady  had  lands  settled  on  her  which  might  as 
well  be  added  to  the  territory  of  that  electoral  Han- 
over of  which  the  prince-bishop  was  soon  to  be  the 
head.  Every  acre  added  to  the  possessions  of  the 
chief  of  the  family  would  be  by  so  much  an  increase 
of  dignity,  and  little  sacrifices  were  worth  making  to 
effect  great  and  profitable  results.  The  worthy  pair, 
bishop  and  female  prime  minister,  immediately  pro- 
ceeded to  employ  every  conceivable  engine  whereby 
they  might  destroy  the  fortress  of  the  hopes  of 


36  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

Sophia  Dorothea  and  Augustus  of  Wolfenbiittel. 
They  cared  for  nothing,  save  that  the  hand  of  the 
former  should  be  conferred  upon  the  bishop's  eldest 
son ;  that  George  who  was  subsequently  our  George 
I.,  and  who  had  as  little  desire  to  be  matched  with  his 
cousin,  or  his  cousin  with  him,  as  kinsfolk  can  have 
who  cordially  detest  each  other. 

George  Louis  was  not  shaped  for  a  lover.  He  was 
not  indeed  so  deformed  as  Prince  Riquet  with  the 
tuft,  but  neither  was  he  possessed  of  that  legendary 
prince's  wit,  refinement,  and  most  winning  ways. 
George  Louis  was  mean  in  person  and  character. 
Epaminondas  was  little  more  than  a  dwarf,  but  then 
he  was  a  giant  measured  by  the  stature  of  his  worth. 
Not  so  this  heir  of  great  hopes ;  he  was  the  lord  of 
small  virtues ;  and  his  insignificance  of  person  was 
insignificant  only  because  it  bore  not  about  it  any 
manly  stamp,  or  outward  promise  of  an  inward  merit. 
George  was  brave  indeed  ;  to  none  of  the  princes  of 
the  house  of  Brunswick  can  be  denied  the  possession 
of  bravery.  In  all  the  bloody  and  useless  wars  of  the 
period,  he  had  distinguished  himself  by  his  dauntless 
courage  and  his  cool  self-possession.  I  have  intimated 
that  he  was  not  heroic,  but  I  may  correct  the  phrase  ; 
he  really  looked  heroic  at  the  head  of  his  squadron, 
charging  across  the  battle-field,  and  carrying  his 
sword  and  his  fringed  and  feathered  hat  into  the  very 
thickest  of  the  fray,  where  the  thunder  was  loudest, 
and  death  revelled  amid  the  incense  of  villainous  salt- 
petre. He  did  not  fail,  it  may  be  added,  in  one  of  the 
characteristics  of  bravery,  humanity  on  the  field. 
He  had  no  great  heart  for  the  common  sufferings,  or 
the  mental  anguish,  of  others  ;  but  for  a  wounded  foe 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  37 

he  had  a  thorough  English  respect,  and  he  no  more 
dreamed  of  the  Muscovite  officers'  fashion  of  massa- 
cring the  helpless  wounded  enemy  than  he  did  of  the 
millennium. 

Out  of  the  field  of  battle  George  Louis  was  an 
extremely  ordinary  personage,  except  in  his  vices. 
He  was  coarsely  minded  and  coarsely  spoken,  and  his 
profligacy  was  so  extreme  of  character,  —  it  bore 
about  it  so  little  of  what  Lord  Chesterfield  recom- 
mended when  he  said  a  man  might  be  gentlemanlike 
even  in  his  vices,  that  even  the  bishop,  easy  as  he 
was  both  as  parent  and  prelate,  and  rich  as  he  was 
himself  in  evil  example  to  a  son  who  needed  no  such 
warrant  to  plunge  headlong  into  sin,  —  even  the 
bishop  felt  uncomfortable  for  awhile.  He  thought, 
however,  as  easy  fathers  do  sometimes  think,  that 
marriage  would  cure  profligacy.  When  we  read  in 
German  ballads  of  pure  young  girls  being  sacrificed 
to  monsters,  the  meaning  probably  is,  that  they  are 
given,  unconsulted  and  unheeded,  to  lords  and  mas- 
ters who  are  odious  to  them. 

George  Louis  was  now  in  his  twenty-second  year. 
He  was  born  in  1660,  and  he  had  recently  acquired 
increase  of  importance  from  the  fact  of  his  sire  hav- 
ing succeeded  to  the  estates,  grandeur,  and  expecta- 
tions of  his  predecessor,  Duke  John  Frederick.  The 
latter  was  on  his  way  to  Rome,  in  1679,  a  city  which 
he  much  loved,  holding  in  respect  a  good  portion  of 
what  is  taught  there.  He  was  proceeding  thither 
with  a  view  of  a  little  more  of  pleasure,  and  some- 
thing therewith  of  instruction,  when  a  sudden  attack 
of  illness  carried  him  off;  and  his  death  excited  as 
much  grief  in  the  bishop  as  it  possibly  could  in  one 


38  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

who  had  little  reverence  for  the  duke,  by  whose  death 
he  profited  largely. 

When  the  bishop,  as  a  natural  consequence  of  this 
death,  established  a  gayer  court  at  Hanover  than  had 
ever  yet  been  seen  there,  became  sovereign  duke, 
made  a  sovereign  duchess  of  his  wife  Sophia,  of  whom 
I  shall  have  to  speak  more  at  large,  in  a  future  page, 
and  raised  George  Louis  to  the  rank  of  a  "crown 
prince,"  a  title  given  to  many  heirs  who  could  inherit 
nothing  but  coronets,  —  the  last-named  individual 
began  to  consider  speculatively  as  to  what  royal  lady 
he  might,  with  greatest  prospect  of  advantage  to 
himself,  make  offer  of  his  hand. 

At  the  time  here  spoken  of,  it  will  be  remembered 
that  Charles  II.  was  King  in  England.  The  king's 
brother,  James,  Duke  of  York,  had  a  daughter,  a 
certain  "  Lady  Anne,"  who  is  better  known  to  us  all 
by  her  after-title,  in  which  there  is  undeniable  truth 
seasoned  by  a  little  flattery,  of  "  good  Queen  Anne." 
In  the  year  1680,  George  of  Hanover  came  over  to 
England  with  matrimonial  views  respecting  that 
young  princess.  He  had  on  his  way  visited  William 
of  Orange,  at  The  Hague ;  and  when  that  calculating 
prince  was  made  the  confidential  depository  of  the 
views  of  George  Louis  respecting  the  Princess  Anne 
of  England,  he  listened  with  much  complacency,  but 
is  suspected  of  having  forthwith  set  on  foot  the  series 
of  intrigues  which,  helped  forward  by  Madame  von 
Platen,  ended  in  the  recall  of  George  from  England, 
and  in  his  hapless  marriage  with  the  more  hapless 
Sophia  Dorothea. 

George  of  Hanover  left  The  Hague  with  the  con- 
viction that  he  had  a  friend  in  William  ;  but  William 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  39 

was  no  abettor  of  marriages  with  the  Princess  Anne, 
and  least  of  all  could  he  wish  success  to  the  heredi- 
tary prince  of  Hanover,  whose  union  with  one  of  the 
heiresses  of  the  British  throne  might,  under  certain 
contingencies,  miserably  mar  his  own  prospects.  The 
case  is  very  succinctly  put  by  Miss  Strickland,  who 
makes  allusion  to  the  subject  of  this  visit  and  con- 
templated marriage  in  her  life  of  Mary,  the  wife  of 
William.  "If  George  of  Hanover  married  Anne 
of  York,  and  the  Princess  of  Orange  died  first,  with- 
out offspring  (as  she  actually  did),  William  of  Orange 
would  have  had  to  give  way  before  their  prior  claims 
on  the  succession ;  to  prevent  which  he  set  at  work 
a  threefold  series  of  intrigues,  in  the  household  of 
his  sister-in-law,  at  the  court  of  Hanover,  and  that 
of  Zell."  The  plot  was  as  complicated  as  any  in  a 
Spanish  comedy,  and  it  is  as  hard  to  unravel. 

A  history  of  Brunswick,  published  anonymously 
soon  after  the  accession  of  George  I.  to  the  crown 
of  these  realms,  asserts  that  the  prince  arrived  in 
this  country  to  prosecute  his  suit  to  the  Princess 
Anne,  who  had  just  been  somewhat  unexpectedly 
deprived  of  another  lover,  on  the  i  /th  of  November, 
1680.  The%  Sidney  diary  fixes  his  arrival  at  Green- 
wich on  the  6th  of  December  of  that  year.  England 
was  much  disturbed  at  the  time  by  a  double  subject 
of  discussion.  Men's  minds  were  much  occupied 
with  the  question  of  excluding  from  the  succession 
to  the  throne  James,  the  father  of  the  lady  to  whom 
George  came  a-wooing.  The  second  subject  of  dis- 
quietude was  the  trial  of  Lord  Viscount  Stafford,  then 
in  process  of  being  slowly  murdered  by  a  judicial  trial, 
on  a  charge  of  conspiring  the  death  of  the  king.  The 


40  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

charge  was  supported  by  the  oaths,  made  with 
alacrity,  of  that  pupil  of  whom  Merchant  Tailors' 
School  is  not  proud,  Titus  Gates,  and  one  or  two 
others  —  liars  as  stupendous.  If  George  Louis 
landed  at  Greenwich,  as  is  said,  on  the  6th  of  De- 
cember, 1680,  it  was  the  day  on  which  the  calum- 
niated nobleman  entered  on  his  defence.  On  the  7th 
he  was  condemned,  and  Evelyn,  who  was  present  at 
the  trial,  rightly  remarks  upon  the  guilt  or  innocence 
of  the  accused  in  this  strain :  "  I  can  hardly  think 
that  a  person  of  his  age  and  experience  should  en- 
gage men  whom  he  never  saw  before  (and  one  of 
them  who  came  to  visit  him  as  a  stranger  at  Paris), 
pointblank  to  murder  the  king ; "  but  in  recollection 
of  the  deliberate  and  hard  swearing,  he  adds,  per- 
plexedly, "God  only,  who  searches  hearts,  can  dis- 
cover the  truth."  On  the  29th  of  the  month, 
Viscount  Stafford  was  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill,  and 
at  this  lively  spectacle  George  of  Hanover  was 
probably  present,  for  on  the  3Oth  of  the  month  he 
sends  a  long  letter  to  her  Serene  Highness,  his 
mother,  stating  that  "  they  cut  off  the  head  of  Lord 
Stafford  yesterday,  and  made  no  more  ado  about  it 
than  if  they  had  chopped  off  the  head  of  a  pullet." 

In  this  letter,  the  writer  enters  into  the  details  of 
the  incidents  of  his  arrival  and  reception  in  England. 
His  Highness's  spelling  of  the  names  of  places  is  as 
defective  as  that  of  poor  Caroline  of  Brunswick 
generally  was,  and  it  reminds  us,  if  one  may  go  to 
the  stage  for  a  simile,  of  the  "  cacolology  "of  Lord 
Duberly.  However,  the  prince  spelt  quite  as  cor- 
rectly as  many  a  lord,  or  lady  either,  of  his  time. 
The  tenor  of  his  epistle  is,  that  he  remained  one 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  41 

whole  day  at  anchor  at  "  Grunnwitsch "  (which  is 
his  reading  of  Greenwich),  while  his  secretary,  Mr. 
Beck,  went  ashore  to  look  for  a  house  for  him,  and 
find  out  his  uncle  Prince  Rupert.  Scant  ceremony 
was  displayed,  it  would  appear,  to  render  hospitable 
welcome  to  such  a  visitor.  Hospitality,  however, 
was  not  altogether  lacking.  The  zealous  Beck  found 
out  "  Uncle  Robert,"  as  the  prince  ungermanises 
Rupert,  and  the  uncle,  having  little  of  his  own  to 
offer  to  his  nephew,  straightway  announced  to  Charles 
II.  the  circumstance  that  the  princely  lover  of  his 
niece  was  lying  in  the  mud  off  "  Grunnwitsch!"  "  His 
Majesty,"  says  George  Louis,  "immediately  ordered 
them  apartments  at  Writhall," — and  he  then  pro- 
ceeds to  state  that  he  had  not  been  there  above  two 
hours  when  Lord  Hamilton  arrived  to  conduct  him 
to  the  king,  who  received  him  most  obligingly.  He 
then  adds,  "Prince  Robert  had  preceded  me,  and 
was  at  court  when  I  saluted  King  Charles.  In  mak- 
ing my  obeisance  to  the  king,  I  did  not  omit  to  give 
him  the  letter  of  your  Serene  Highness  ;  after  which 
he  spoke  of  your  Highness,  and  said  that  he  're- 
membered you  very  well.'  When  he  had  talked 
with  me  some  time,  he  went  to  the  queen,  and  as 
soon  as  I  arrived,  he  made  me  kiss  the  hem  of  her 
Majesty's  petticoat.  The  next  day  I  saw  the  Prin- 
cess of  York  (the  Lady  Anne),  and  I  saluted  her  by 
kissing  her,  with  the  consent  of  the  king.  The  day 
after  I  went  to  visit  Prince  Robert,  who  received  me 
in  bed,  for  he  has  a  malady  in  his  leg,  which  makes 
him  very  often  keep  his  bed.  It  appears  that  it  is 
so,  without  any  pretext,  and  he  has  to  take  care  of 
himself.  He  had  not  failed  of  coming  to  see  me  one 


42  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

day.  All  the  lords  come  to  see  me,  sans  prttendre  la 
main  ches  moi "  (probably,  rather  meaning  without 
ceremony,  without  kissing  hands,  as  was  the  common 
custom  in  Germany,  from  inferiors  to  superiors,  and 
still  remains  a  custom  in  Southern  Germany,  than,  as 
has  been  suggested,  that  "  they  came  without  ventur- 
ing to  shake  hands  with  him  "). 

There  is  something  melancholy  in  the  idea  of  the 
fiery  Rupert  held  ingloriously  prostrate  in  bed  by  a 
sore  leg ;  and  there  is  a  subject  for  a  picture  in  the 
profligate  little  George,  saluting  the  lips  of  the  cold 
Princess  Anne.  Cold,  at  all  events,  and  deaf,  if  we 
were  to  judge  by  results,  did  the  princess  remain  to 
the  suit  of  the  Hanoverian  wooer.  The  suit,  indeed, 
was  not  pressed  by  any  sanction  of  the  lady's  father, 
who,  during  the  three  months'  sojourn  of  George 
Louis  in  England,  remained  in  rather  secluded  state, 
at  Holyrood.  Neither  was  the  suit  opposed  by  James. 
In  the  seclusion  to  which  he  was  condemned  by 
Charles,  who  bade  him  take  patience,  a  commodity 
much  needed  by  himself,  James  was  troubled  but 
little  touching  the  suitor  of  his  daughter.  He  had 
personal  troubles  enough  of  his  own  wherewith  to  be 
concerned,  and  therewith  sundry  annoyances.  On 
the  Christmas  day  of  this  year,  while  George  of 
Hanover  was  enjoying  the  festivities  of  this  time, 
at  the  side  of  James's  daughter,  the  students  of 
King's  College,  Edinburgh,  entertained  James  him- 
self by  a  spectacle  which  must  have  raised  a  sardonic 
smile  on  his  usually  sardonic  face.  Those  young 
gentlemen  burnt  the  Pope  in  effigy,  in  front  of 
Holyrood  House,  and  beneath  the  windows  of  the 
apartments  occupied  by  James.  Sir  John  Lauder 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  43 

apologises  for  this  rudeness  by  kindly  explaining 
that  "this  was  highly  resented  as  an  inhospitable 
affront  to  the  Duke  of  York,  though  it  was  only  to 
his  religion."  As  if  an  affront  to  what  is  so  sacred, 
could  be  excused  by  an  "only."  But  it  was  at  a 
time  when  the  actors  at  the  "  Theatre  Royal "  in 
London  were  playing  "The  Female  Prelate,"  and 
George  Louis  had  a  good  opportunity  of  hearing  in 
what  rugged  hexameters  was  told  the  story  of  Joanna 
Angelica.  How  the  offended  became  the  slighted 
mistress  of  the  Duke  of  Saxony,  vowed  revenge, 
turned  monk,  became  Pope,  and  after  revenging  the 
injuries  she  had  received  from  the  duke,  as  woman, 
condemned  him  to  the  stake  for  his  blasphemies 
against  her  as  Pope. 

Among  the  "  celebrations  "  of  the  visit  of  George 
Louis  to  this  country,  was  the  pomp  of  the  ceremony 
which  welcomed  him  to  Cambridge.  Never  had  the 
groves  or  stream  of  Cam  been  made  vocal  by  the 
echoes  of  such  laudation  as  was  given  and  taken  on 
this  solemnly  hilarious  occasion.  There  was  much 
feasting,  which  included  very  much  drinking,  and 
much  expenditure  of  heavy  compliment  in  very  light 
Latin.  Scaliger's  assertion,  that  the  Germans  do 
not  care  what  wine  they  drink,  so  long  as  it  is  wine, 
nor  what  Latin  they  speak,  so  long  as  it  is  Latin, 
is  a  calumny.  They  are  nice  connoisseurs  of  both. 
George  and  his  trio  of  followers,  who  were  made 
doctors  of  law  by  the  scholastic  authorities,  were  too 
polite  to  criticise  either.  The  honour,  however,  was 
hardly  more  appropriate  than  when  a  similar  one 
was  conferred,  in  after  years,  upon  Blucher  and  the 
celebrated  artillery  officer,  Gneisenau.  "Ah!"  ex- 


44  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

claimed  the  veteran  leader,  "  they  are  going  to  make 
me  a  doctor ;  but  it  was  Gneisenau  that  furnished  all 
the  pills." 

That  Parliament  was  convened  at  Oxford  whereby 
there  was,  as  Evelyn  remarks,  "  great  expectation  of 
his  Royal  Highness's  cause,  as  to  the  succession 
against  which  the  House  was  set,"  and  therewith 
there  was,  according  to  the  same  diarist,  "  an  extraor- 
dinary, sharp,  cold  spring,  not  yet  a  leaf  upon  the 
trees,  frost  and  snow  lying  while  the  whole  nation 
was  in  the  greatest  ferment."  Such  was  the  Parlia- 
ment, and  such  the  spring,  when  George  Louis  was 
suddenly  called  home.  He  was  highly  interested  in 
the  bill,  which  was  read  a  first  time  at  that  Parlia- 
ment, as  also  in  the  "  expedients "  which  were 
proposed  in  lieu  of  such  bill,  and  rejected.  The 
expedients  proposed  instead  of  the  Bill  of  Exclusion 
in  this  Parliament,  were  that  the  whole  government, 
upon  the  death  of  Charles  II.,  should  be  vested  in  a 
regent,  who  should  be  the  Princess  of  Orange,  and 
if  she  died  without  issue,  then  the  Princess  Anne 
should  be  regent.  But  if  James,  Duke  of  York, 
should  have  a  son  educated  a  Protestant,  then  the 
regency  should  last  no  longer  than  his  minority,  and 
that  the  regent  should  govern  in  the  name  of  the 
father  while  he  lived;  but  that  he  should  be  obliged 
to  reside  five  hundred  miles  from  the  British  do- 
minions; and  if  the  duke  should  return  to  these 
kingdoms,  the  crown  should  immediately  devolve 
on  the  regent,  and  the  duke  and  his  adherents  be 
deemed  guilty  of  high  treason. 

Here  was  matter  in  which  the  Hanoverian  suitor 
was  doubly  interested  both  as  man  and  as  lover. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  45 

However  strenuously  some  writers  may  assert  that  the 
heads  of  the  house  of  Brunswick  troubled  themselves 
in  no  wise  upon  the  question  of  the  succession,  no 
one  can  deny,  or  doubt,  that  they  had  a  deep,  though, 
it  may  be  as  yet,  a  distant  interest  in  it.  Their  con- 
cern was  greater  than  their  professed  adherents  will 
consent  to  acknowledge.  Nor  was  there  anything 
unnatural  or  unbecoming  in  such  concern.  The 
possible  inheritance  of  even  such  a  throne  as  that  of 
England  was  in  the  days  of  Charles  II.,  when  Britain 
was  treated  with  a  contempt  by  other  nations  which 
of  right  belonged  only  to  her  worthless  sovereign  — 
even  a  possible  inheritance  to  even  such  a  throne 
was  not  to  be  contemplated  without  emotion.  An 
exclusive  Protestant  succession  made  such  a  heritage 
possible  to  the  house  of  Brunswick,  and  if  ever  the 
heads  of  that  house,  before  the  object  of  their  hopes 
was  realised,  ceased  to  be  active  for  its  realisation, 
it  was  when  assurance  was  made  doubly  sure,  and 
action  was  unnecessary. 

It  is  not  easy  to  determine  what  part  William  of 
Orange  had  in  the  recall  of  George  Louis  from  Eng- 
land, but  the  suddenness  of  that  recall  was  an  object 
of  some  admiring  perplexity  to  a  lover,  who  left  a 
lady  who  was  by  no  means  inconsolable,  and  who, 
two  years  afterward,  was  gaily  married  at  St.  James's 
to  the  Prince  of  Denmark,  on  the  first  leisure  day 
between  the  executions  of  Russell  and  of  Sidney. 

George  Louis,  however,  obeyed  the  summons  of 
his  sovereign  and  father,  but  it  was  not  until  his 
arrival  in  Hanover  that  he  found  himself  called  upon 
to  transfer  the  prosecution  of  his  matrimonial  suit 
from  one  object  to  another.  The  ruling  idea  in  the 


46  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

mind  of  Ernest  Augustus  was,  that  if  the  territory  of 
Zell  were  united  to  that  of  Hanover,  there  would  be 
an  increased  chance  of  procuring  from  the  emperor 
its  elevation  to  an  electorate ;  and  he  felt  that,  how- 
ever he  might  have  provided  to  secure  his  succession 
to  the  dominions  of  Zell,  the  marriage  of  his  son  with 
the  duke's  only  child  would  add  thereto  many  broad 
acres,  the  possession  of  which  would  add  dignity  to 
the  elector. 

Sophia  Dorothea  was  still  little  more  than  a  child ; 
but  that  very  circumstance  was  made  use  of  in  order 
to  procure  the  postponement  of  her  marriage  with 
Augustus  of  Wolfenbiittel.  The  Duke  of  Zell  did 
not  stand  in  need  of  much  argument  from  his  brother 
to  understand  that  the  union  of  the  young  lovers 
might  more  properly  be  celebrated  when  the  bride 
was  sixteen  than  a  year  earlier.  The  duke  was  ready 
to  accept  any  reasoning,  the  object  of  which  was  to 
enable  him  to  retain  his  daughter  another  year  at 
his  side.  Accordingly  a  betrothal  only  took  place 
between  Sophia  and  Augustus,  and  the  public  cere- 
mony of  marriage  was  deferred  for  a  year  and  some 
supplementary  months. 

It  was  a  time  which  was  very  actively  employed 
by  those  who  hoped  to  accomplish  much  before  it 
had  quite  expired.  Latimer  remarks,  that  the  devil 
is  the  only  prelate  he  knew  who  is  for  ever  busy  in 
his  diocese.  He  certainly  was  unweariedly  occupied 
for  a  time  in  that  portion  of  his  see  which  is  com- 
prised in  the  narrow  limits  including  Hanover  and 
Zell.  And  it  was  an  occupation  in  which  that  dark 
diocesan  must  have  been  especially  delighted.  The 
end  of  the  action  employed  was  to  destroy  the  happi- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  47 

ness  of  two  young  persons  who  were  bound  to  each 
other  by  the  strong  bonds  of  respect  and  affection. 
A  bad  ambition  was  the  impelling  motive  of  such 
action.  The  devil,  then,  never  had  work  which  so 
exactly  suited  his  Satanic  nature. 

His  ministers,  however  worthy  they  may  have  been 
of  their  master,  as  far  as  zeal  was  concerned,  did  him 
or  themselves  little  credit  with  regard  to  the  measure 
of  their  success.  The  sixteenth  birthday  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  had  arrived,  and  George  Louis  had  made 
no  impression  on  her  heart  —  the  image  of  the  absent 
Augustus  still  lived  there ;  and  the  whole  plot  would 
have  failed  but  for  the  sudden,  and  active,  and 
efficient  energy  of  one  who  seemed  as  if  she  had 
allowed  matters  to  proceed  to  extremity  in  order  to 
exhibit  the  better  her  own  powers  when  she  conde- 
scended to  interfere  personally,  and  remedy  the  ill 
success  of  others  by  a  triumph  of  her  own.  That 
person  was  Sophia,  the  wife  of  Ernest,  a  lady  who 
rivalled  Griselda  in  one  point  of  her  patience  —  that 
which  she  felt  for  her  husband's  infidelities.  In 
other  respects  she  was  crafty,  philosophical,  and 
free-thinking;  but  she  was  as  ambitious  as  any  of 
her  family,  and  as  she  had  resolved  on  the  marriage 
of  her  son,  George  Louis,  with  Sophia  Dorothea,  she 
at  once  proceeded  to  accomplish  that  upon  which  she 
had  resolved. 

It  had  suddenly  come  to  her  knowledge  that 
Augustus  of  Wolfenbiittel  had  made  his  reappear- 
ance at  the  court  of  Zell.  Coupling  the  knowledge 
of  this  fact  with  the  remembrance  that  Sophia  Doro- 
thea was  now  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  that  at  such 
a  period  her  marriage  had  been  fixed,  the  mother  of 


48  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

George  Louis  addressed  herself  at  once  to  the  task 
of  putting  her  son  in  the  place  of  the  favoured  lover. 
She  ordered  out  the  heavy  coach  and  heavier  Meck- 
lenburg horses,  by  which  German  potentates  were 
wont  to  travel  stately  and  leisurely  by  post  some  two 
centuries  ago.  It  was  night  when  she  left  Hanover ; 
and  although  she  had  not  farther  to  travel  than  an 
ordinary  train  could  now  accomplish  in  an  hour,  it 
was  broad  daylight  before  this  match-making  and 
match-breaking  lady  reached  the  portals  of  the  ducal 
palace  of  Zell. 

There  was  something  delightfully  primitive  in  the 
method  of  her  proceeding.  She  did  not  despise  state, 
except  on  occasions  when  serious  business  was  on 
hand.  The  present  was  such  an  occasion,  and  she 
therefore  waited  for  no  usher  to  marshal  her  way  and 
announce  her  coming  to  the  duke.  She  descended 
from  her  ponderous  coach,  pushed  aside  the  sleepy 
sentinel,  who  appeared  disposed  to  question  her, 
before  he  made  way,  and  entering  the  hall  of  the 
mansion,  loudly  demanded  of  the  few  servants  who 
came  hurrying  to  meet  her,  to  be  conducted  to  the 
duke.  It  was  intimated  to  her  that  he  was  then 
dressing,  but  that  his  Highness  would  soon  be  in  a 
condition  to  descend  and  wait  upon  her. 

Too  impatient  to  tarry,  and  too  eager  to  care  for 
ceremony,  she  mounted  the  stairs,  bade  a  groom  of 
the  chamber  point  out  to  her  the  door  of  the  duke's 
room ;  and,  her  order  having  been  obeyed,  she  forth- 
with pushed  open  the  door,  entered  the  apartment, 
and  discovered  the  dismayed  duke  in  the  most 
negligt  of  deshabilles.  She  neither  made  apology 
nor  would  receive  any,  but  intimating  that  she  came 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  49 

upon  business,  at  once  asked,  "  Where  is  your  wife  ? " 
The  flurried  Duke  of  Zell  pointed  through  an  open 
door  to  a  capacious  bed  in  the  adjacent  room,  wherein 
lay  the  wondering  duchess,  lost  in  eiderdown  and 
deep  amazement. 

The  "old  Sophia,"  could  have  wished,  it  would 
seem,  that  she  had  been  farther  off.  She  was  not 
quite  rude  enough  to  close  the  door,  and  so  cut  off 
all  communication  and  listening ;  but  remembering 
that  the  Duchess  of  Zell  was  but  very  indifferently 
acquainted  with  German,  she  ceased  to  speak  in  the 
language  then  common  to  the  German  courts,  — 
French, — and  immediately  addressed  the  duke  in 
hard  Teutonic  phrase,  which  was  utterly  unintel- 
ligible to  the  vexed  and  suspecting  duchess. 

This  was  another  group  for  an  artist  desirous  to 
illustrate  the  byways  of  history.  Half  undressed, 
the  duke  occupied  a  chair  close  to  his  toilet-table, 
while  the  astute  wife  of  Ernest  Augustus,  seated 
near  him,  unfolded  a  narrative  to  which  he  listened 
with  every  moment  an  increase  of  complacency  and 
conviction.  The  Duchess  Eleanor,  from  her  bed  in 
the  adjacent  room,  could  see  the  actors,  but  could  not 
comprehend  the  dialogue.  But  if  the  narrative  was 
unintelligible  to  her,  she  could  understand  the  drift 
of  the  argument ;  and  as  the  names  of  her  daughter 
and  lover  were  being  constantly  pronounced  with  that 
of  George  Louis,  the  poor  lady  continued  to  lie 
helpless  beneath  much  alarm  and  her  silk  counter- 
pane. 

The  case  was  forcibly  put  by  the  mother  of  George. 
She  showed  how  union  makes  strength,  how  little 
profit  could  arise  from  a  match  between  Sophia  Dor- 


50  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

othea  and  Augustus  of  Wolfenbiittel,  and  how  advan- 
tageous must  be  an  union  between  the  heir  of  Hanover 
and  the  heiress  of  the  domains  which  her  provident 
father  had  added  to  Zell,  and  had  bequeathed  to  his 
daughter.  She  spoke  of  the  certainty  of  Ernest 
Augustus  being  created  arch-standard-bearer  of  the 
empire  of  Germany,  and  therewith  Elector  of  Hano- 
ver. She  hinted  at  the  possibility  even  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  one  day  sharing  with  her  son  the  throne 
of  Great  Britain.  The  hint,  if  really  made,  was  some- 
what premature,  but  the  astute  lady  may  have 
strengthened  her  case  by  reminding  her  hearer  that 
the  crown  of  England  would  most  probably  be  re- 
served only  for  a  Protestant  succession,  and  that  her 
son  was,  if  a  distant,  yet  not  a  very  distant,  and 
certainly  a  possible  heir. 

The  obsequious  Duke  of  Zell  was  bewildered  by 
the  visions  of  greatness  presented  to  his  mind's  eye 
by  his  clever  sister-in-law.  He  was  as  proud  as  the 
poor  exiled  Stanislaus,  who  entered  his  daughter's 
apartment,  on  the  morning  he  received  the  application 
of  Louis  XV.  for  her  hand,  with  the  salutation,  "  Good 
morning,  my  child  !  you  are  Queen  of  France ; "  and 
then  he  kissed  the  hand  of  Marie  Leczinska, — the 
happy  father,  too  happy  to  be  the  first  to  render 
homage  to  his  daughter  on  her  becoming  what  he 
had  ceased  to  be  —  a  sovereign  oppressed  by  respon- 
sibilities. The  Duke  of  Zell  was  almost  as  eager  to 
go  and  congratulate  his  daughter.  With  ready  lack 
of  honesty,  he  had  consented  to  break  off  the  match 
between  Sophia  Dorothea  and  her  affianced  lover,  and 
to  bestow  her  hand  upon  the  careless  prince  for  whom 
it  was  now  demanded  by  his  mother.  The  latter 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  51 

returned  to  Hanover  perfectly  satisfied  with  the  work 
of  that  night  and  morning. 

The  same  satisfaction  was  not  experienced  by  the 
Duchess  Eleanor.  When  she  came  to  learn  the  facts, 
she  burst  forth  in  expressions  of  grief  and  indignation. 
The  marriage  which  had  now  been  definitively  broken, 
had  been  with  her  an  affair  of  the  heart,  —  of  a 
mother's  heart.  It  had  not  been  less  an  affair  of  the 
heart  —  of  a  young  girl's  heart  —  with  Sophia  Doro- 
thea ;  and  the  princely  lover  from  Wolfenbiittel  had 
invested  as  much  heart  in  the  matter  as  had  ever 
been  known  in  German  times  when  minstrel  sang  of 
knights  whose  chivalry  more  than  half  consisted  of 
fidelity  in  love.  It  was  a  pitiable  case !  There  were 
three  persons  who  were  to  be  rendered  irretrievably 
wretched,  in  order,  not  that  any  one  might  be  ren- 
dered happy,  but  that  a  man,  without  a  heart,  might 
be  made  a  little  more  spacious  in  the  possession  of 
dirt.  The  acres  of  Zell  were  to  bring  misery  on  their 
heiress,  and  every  acre  was  to  purchase  its  season  of 
sorrow. 

No  entreaty  could  move  the  duke.  In  his  dignity 
he  forgot  the  father  :  and  the  prayers  and  tears  of  his 
child  failed  to  touch  the  parent,  who  really  loved  her 
well,  but  whose  affection  was  dissolved  beneath  the 
fiery  heat  of  his  ambition.  He  was  singularly  ambi- 
tious ;  for  the  possible  effect  of  a  marriage  with 
George  Louis  was  merely  to  add  his  own  independent 
duchy  of  Lunebourg  to  the  dominions  of  Hanover. 
His  daughter,  moreover,  detested  her  cousin,  and  his 
wife  detested  her  sister-in-law,  —  above  all,  the  newly 
accepted  bridegroom,  if  he  did  not  detest,  had  no 
shadow,  nor  affected  to  have  any  shadow,  of  respect, 


52  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

regard,  or  affection  for  the  poor  young  victim  who 
was  to  be  flung  to  him  with  indecent  and  un- 
natural disregard  of  all  her  feelings  as  daughter  and 
maiden. 

The  matter  was  urged  onward  by  Sophia  of  Han- 
over ;  and  in  testimony  of  the  freedom  of  inclination 
with  which  Sophia  Dorothea  acted  on  this  marriage, 
she  addressed  a  formal  letter  to  the  mother  of  her 
proposed  husband,  expressive  of  her  obedience  to  the 
will  of  her  father,  and  promissory  of  the  same  obedi- 
ence to  the  requirements  of  her  future  mother-in-law. 
It  is  a  mere  formal  document,  proving  nothing  but 
that  it  was  penned  for  the  assumed  writer  by  a  cold- 
hearted  inventor,  and  that  the  heart  of  the  copier  was 
far  away  from  her  words. 

After  a  world  of  misery  and  mock  wooing,  crowded 
into  a  few  months,  the  hateful  and  ill-omened  mar- 
riage took  place  at  Zell  on  the  2ist  of  November, 
1682.  The  bride  was  sixteen,  the  bridegroom  twenty- 
two.  There  was  quite  enough  on  both  sides  to  make 
happiness,  if  youth  could  establish  felicity;  but  in 
this  case  the  maiden,  who  was  one  of  the  fairest  and 
most  refined  of  German  maidens,  had  neither  heart 
nor  regard  for  the  youth,  who  was  one  of  the  least 
attractive  in  mind  or  person  who  could  address  him- 
self to  win  a  maiden's  hand,  which,  on  the  present 
occasion,  was  the  very  last  thing  he  thought  of 
doing. 

The  marriage  took  place,  as  I  have  stated,  on  the 
2ist  of  November,  1682  ;  a  week  after,  Prince  Rupert, 
who  for  some  time  before  had  been  sunning  himself, 
a  poor  invalid,  beneath  the  beeches  at  Windsor,  died 
at  his  house  in  Spring  Gardens  (where  he  had  resided 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  S3 

for  eight  years)  —  as  though  the  intelligence  of  the 
marriage  had  been  too  much  for  his  worn-out  spirit 
—  or  its  shattered  tabernacle. 

Of  the  splendour  which  attended  the  ceremony, 
court  historiographers  wrote  in  loyal  ecstasy  and  large 
folios,  describing  every  character  and  dress,  every 
incident  and  dish,  every  tableau  and  trait,  with  a  mi- 
nuteness almost  inconceivable,  and  a  weariness  sadden- 
ing even  to  think  of.  They  thought  of  everything 
but  the  heart  of  the  principal  personage  in  the  cere- 
mony —  that  of  the  bride.  They  could  describe  the 
superb  lace  which  veiled  it,  and  prate  of  its  value 
and  workmanship ;  but  of  the  worth  and  woe  of  the 
heart  which  beat  beneath  it,  these  courtly  historians 
knew  no  more  than  they  did  of  honesty.  Their  flat- 
tery was  of  the  grossest,  but  they  had  no  comprehen- 
sion of  "the  situation."  To  them  all  mortals  were 
but  as  ballet-dancers  and  pantomimists,  and  if  they 
were  but  bravely  dressed,  and  picturesquely  grouped, 
the  describers  thereof  thought  of  nothing  beyond. 

The  maker  of  this  splendidly  miserable  marriage 
was  proud  of  her  achievement.  She  claims  a  word 
of  description  for  herself,  even  though  it  be  at  the 
end  of  a  chapter. 

Chevreau,  the  friend  of  the  Elector  Palatine  Charles 
Louis,  the  brother  of  Sophia,  said  of  the  Duchess  of 
Hanover,  "  that  in  all  France  there  exists  no  one  of  a 
more  excellent  wit  than  the  Duchess  Sophia ; "  and, 
as  if  to  show  that  there  were  things  in  Germany  as 
valuable  as  wit,  he  adds,  "neither  is  there  any  one 
more  deeply  instructed  in  philosophical  science  than 
her  sister,  the  Princess  Elizabeth  of  Bohemia." 

Sophia  had  been  born  in  a  school  which  sharpens 


54  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

wit.  Her  mother  was  the  high-spirited  daughter  of 
a  meanly  spirited  king,  who  allowed  her  to  marry  as 
poor-spirited  a  prince.  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  James 
I.,  used  to  say  to  her  rather  provoking  and  not  very 
Protestant  mother,  Anne  of  Denmark,  that  she  would 
not  be  a  Romanist  to  gain  the  most  brilliant  crown 
in  the  world.  She  was  married  to  Frederick,  the 
Elector  Palatine,  when  the  religious  revolutions  of 
the  time  called  him  to  the  newly  created  throne  of 
Bohemia,  whereon  his  gallant  wife  would  have  held 
him,  had  she  only,  in  return,  been  supported  by  her 
father.  "  Goody  Palsgrave  "  was  hardly  a  harsh  nick- 
name for  such  a  consort  as  hers.  He  had  nothing  of 
the  manly  courage  which  looks  misfortune  steadily 
in  the  face,  and  strives  to  make  it  lead  to  ultimate 
success.  He  lost  a  kingdom,  with  tears  in  his  eyes, 
like  the  Moor  in  Spain,  —  and  thereupon  submitted, 
yet  with  nothing  of  heroic  patience,  to  destiny.  So, 
he  lost  the  young  prince,  Frederick  Henry,  his  son, 
who  was  drowned  in  his  sight,  —  calling  to  him  for 
help.  He  could  bewail  the  lot  of  his  perishing  boy, 
but  even  parental  love  could  not  nerve  him  to  strike 
out  boldly  and  save  the  sinking  child.  Like  his  mis- 
fortunes, his  children  were  not  few,  but  they  were 
singularly  unlike  their  father.  His  son,  Charles 
Louis,  perhaps,  had  some  points  of  resemblance  with 
his  sire ;  but  how  unlike  him  was  the  fiery  Rupert ! 
how  unlike  the  "  Grave  Maurice,"  named  so,  not 
from  his  gravity,  but  from  his  rank !  His  daughters, 
too,  partook  more  of  their  mother's  mental  qualities 
than  those  of  her  husband.  Adversity,  tribulation, 
flattery,  or  deception,  worked  in  each  —  Elizabeth, 
Louisa,  Henrietta,  and  Sophia  —  various  results  ;  but 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  55 

the  mother's  intellect  was  inherited  by  all,  without  all 
of  them  possessing  the  mother's  virtues. 

Whilst  the  mother  was  dwelling  at  The  Hague, 
absent  from  the  electoral  court  of  her  son,  Sophia 
was  the  chosen  companion,  the  solace,  and  the  joy  of 
the  deep-thinking  and  wild-dreaming  Elizabeth,  her 
sister.  The  latter  heard  with  some  surprise,  and 
still  more  indignation,  that  the  heavy  Duke  of  Bruns- 
wick, Ernest  Augustus,  had  made  an  offer  of  marriage 
to  the  brilliant  and  light-hearted  Sophia.  The  offer 
smacked  of  presumption,  for  Sophia  was  the  daughter 
of  a  king,  though  but  of  a  poor  and  brief-reigning 
monarch ;  whereas  Ernest  Augustus  was  but  a  duke, 
with  large  pride,  but  a  very  small  estate,  and  not  rich 
in  expectations.  No  one  could  have  guessed,  when 
he  went  a-wooing  to  the  gay  and  intellectual  Sophia, 
that  he  would  ever  be  more  than  Duke  of  Brunswick 
and  Bishop  of  Osnaburgh.  It  did  not  enter  into 
popular  speculation  that  he  would  ever  be  Duke  of 
Brunswick  and  Elector  of  Hanover.  On  the  other 
hand,  speculation  could  hardly  have  imagined,  in  the 
year  1658,  that  the  young  Sophia  would  be  the  heiress 
of  a  throne  and  t'he  mother  of  a  line  of  kings.  Her 
own  mother,  the  ex-Queen  of  Bohemia,  decidedly 
looked  upon  the  match  as  a  m/salliance,  but  it  was 
one  of  those  which  may  be  said,  in  more  than  in  the 
popular  and  proverbial  sense,  to  have  been  made  in 
heaven  ;  for  though  it  could  not  personally  benefit  the 
daughter  of  James  I.,  it  gave  a  crown  to  the  grand- 
child of  her  who  had  so  proudly  declared  that  she 
would  rather  forfeit  the  most  glorious  crown  on  earth 
than  retain  it  by  the  surrender  of  Protestantism.  It 
was  doubly  right  that  in  the  Protestant  child  of  such 


56  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

a  mother,  the  succession  to  the  throne  of  these  realms 
should  have  been  fixed.  We  shall  hear  subsequently 
of  the  granddaughter  of  Charles  I.,  the  Duchess  of 
Savoy  (subsequently  Queen  of  Sardinia),  protesting 
against  such  an  arrangement.  Her  protest  was  not 
valid,  only  because  it  was  not  founded  on  the  princi- 
ples which  were  asserted  by  Elizabeth  of  Bohemia, 
and  which  influenced  her  daughter  Sophia.  The 
daughter  of  Charles  the  First's  youngest  daughter 
would  fain  have  had  the  throne  of  England  rendered 
accessible  to  herself  and  heirs,  although  Romanists, 
upon  the  poor  understanding  of  toleration  to  the 
reformed  faith.  Our  forefathers  would  have  nothing 
to  do  with  such  compromise,  and  they  who  kept  to 
the  purer  faith  gained  the  splendid  prize. 

Sophia  was  married  in  1658,  and  during  a  long 
course  of  subsequent  years  she  sustained  the  highest 
reputation  for  shrewdness,  extensive  knowledge,  wit, 
acute  observation,  originality  of  conception,  and  bril- 
liancy of  expression.  She  had  not,  indeed,  the  stern 
steadiness  of  principle  of  her  mother,  and  she  was  by 
far  more  ambitious,  while  she  was  less  scrupulous  as 
to  the  means  employed  for  the  attainment  of  her  ends. 
Men  of  less  information  than  herself  were  afraid  of 
her,  for  she  was  fond  of  triumphing  in  argument.  But 
she  was  previously  well  armed  for  securing  such 
triumphs,  and  the  amount  of  knowledge  which  she 
had  made  her  own,  amid  scenes  and  trials  and  dis- 
sipations little  favourable  to  the  amassing  of  such 
intellectual  treasure,  is  accounted  for  by  a  remark 
of  Leibnitz,  with  whom  she  loved  to  hold  close 
intercourse, — to  the  effect  that  she  was  not  only 
given  to  asking  why,  but  that,  as  he  quaintly  puts  it, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  57 

she  invariably  wanted  to  know  the  why  of  the  whys. 
In  other  words,  she  accepted  no  reasons  which  were 
not  rendered  strictly  intelligible  to  her. 

And  then,  she  was  as  pretty  as  she  was  clever ; 
without  a  tinge  of  pertness  to  spoil  her  beauty,  or  a 
trace  of  pedantry  to  mar  her  scholarship.  If  she 
loved  to  win  logical  battles  by  power  of  the  latter, 
and  fought  boldly,  eagerly,  and  with  every  sense 
awake  to  profit  by  the  weakness  of  her  adversary,  it 
was  all  done  gaily,  and  lightly  ;  and  if  great  wits  were 
rolled  over  in  the  dust  when  they  tilted  against  her 
in  intellectual  tournaments,  they  were  ready  to  ac- 
knowledge that  they  were  struck  down  with  a  most 
consummate  grace. 

She  as  much  enjoyed  to  see  these  battlings  of 
brains  between  other  parties,  as  to  sustain  the  fight 
herself.  When  her  sister  Elizabeth  had  withdrawn 
from  the  world,  and  retired  within  the  Protestant 
abbey  of  Herford,  to  dream  with  the  dreaming 
Labadie  and  his  disciples  over  theories  more  baseless 
than  dreams  themselves,  the  gay  Sophia  once  sur- 
prised her  too  grave  sister  with  a  visit.  She  brought 
in  her  train  the  ecclesiastical  superintendent  of  Osna- 
burgh  for  the  express  purpose  of  "pitting"  him 
against  the  prophet  and  reformer  Labadie.  Prince 
Charles,  the  son  of  Charles  Louis  (brother  of  Eliza- 
beth and  Sophia),  and  his  tutor,  Paul  Hackenburg, 
were  witnesses  or  partakers  in  the  intellectual  skir- 
mish. Hackenburg  has  left  a  graphic  description  of 
the  onslaught  between  the  orthodox  Osnaburgher  and 
the  new  apostle  Labadie;  at  which  Sophia  assisted 
without  uttering  a  remark,  but  not  without  giving 
evidence  of  much  enjoyment.  When  all  was  over, 


58  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

says  Paul,  "  during  dinner  we  talked  of  nothing  else 
but  this  absurd  and  quaking  sort  of  piety  to  which 
people  are  sometimes  brought,  and  our  astonishment 
could  hardly  find  words  when,  alluding  to  the  number 
of  young  women  of  the  best  families,  richly  dressed, 
brilliant  with  beauty  and  youth,  who  were  insane 
enough  to  give  up  the  conduct  of  their  souls  to  this 
worst  of  men  and  most  powerless  of  priests  (only  to 
be  laughed  at  too  by  him  in  secret),  and  who  were  so 
riveted  to  their  delusions  that  neither  the  prayers  of 
their  parents,  nor  the  pleadings  of  their  betrothed, 
nor  the  prospect  of  maternal  joys  could  tear  them 
away  ;  some  among  them  said  they  were  surely  hypo- 
chondriacs and  unanswerable  for  what  they  might  do ; 
others  opined  that  they  should  all  be  sent  to  the  baths 
of  Schwalbach  or  Pyrmont,  and  that  probably  they 
would  come  back  cured.  All  these  remarks  and  dis- 
cussions made  the  Princess  Elizabeth  highly  indig- 
nant, and  she  exclaimed  against  the  unkindness  which 
could  induce  any  one  to  ascribe  to  bodily  infirmity  a 
greater  degree  of  piety  wherewith  the  Holy  Ghost 
chose  to  inspire  a  certain  number  of  individuals  purer 
than  the  rest  !  But  to  this  the  Electress  Sophia,  a 
lady  of  extraordinary  beauty,  found  an  answer  which 
turned  all  bitterness  into  general  mirth,  by  asserting, 
with  mock  gravity,  that  her  sister's  sole  reason  for 
holding  to  the  Labadists  was  that  they  were  stingy 
housekeepers,  and  cost  little  or  nothing  to  keep." 
Hackenburg  says  that  the  accusation  was  a  true  one, 
but  it  may  be  added  that,  whatever  the  cost  of  this 
household,  it  never  incurred  debt,  never  allowed  ex- 
penses to  go  beyond  its  means  ;  and  if  the  Lady  of 
Hanover  and  her  lord  had  always  followed  the  same 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  59 

vulgar  fashion,  it  would  have  been  none  the  worse  for 
their  reputation  and  comfort,  or  for  that  perhaps  of 
some  of  their  descendants,  who  might  otherwise  have 
profited  by  example. 

Spittler,  writing  of  Sophia  and  her  husband,  says, 
rather  too  panegyrically,  perhaps :  "  Through  the 
complicated  events  of  their  troublous  times,  this 
princely  pair  are  a  sort  of  landmark  whereon  to 
rest  the  eye,  and  form  a  proof  of  how  much  good  may 
be  done  by  those  who  hold  an  exalted  position.  We 
must  admire  that  really  German  intellectual  enthusi- 
asm which  made  them  the  friends  of  Leibnitz,  that 
systematic  firmness  which  characterised  their  gov- 
ernment, and  allied  to  ceaselessly  active  efforts  for 
the  public  good  that  untiring  patience  and  longanim- 
ity so  easy  to  learn  in  years  of  discouragement,  and 
generally  so  easily  forgotten  when  years  of  greater 
prosperity  are  reached."  This  is  rather  showing  the 
principal  characters  in  the  drama  under  a  flood  of 
pink  light,  but  there  is  much  therein  that  is  fairly 
applicable  to  the  wife  of  Ernest  Augustus. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   HOUSEHOLD   OF    GEORGE   AND   SOPHIA 

Reception  of  Sophia  at  the  Court  of  Ernest  Augustus  —  Similar  Posi- 
tion of  Marie  Antoinette  and  Sophia  —  Misfortune  of  the  Abigail 
Use  —  Compassionated  by  the  Duchess  of  Zell  —  Intrigues  and 
Revenge  of  Madame  von  Platen — A  New  Favourite,  Mile.  Er- 
mengarde  von  Schulemberg  —  A  Marriage  Fete,  and  Intended 
Insult  to  the  Princess  Sophia  —  Gross  Vice  of  George  Louis. 

ACCORDING  to  Pope,  it  was  "  to  curse  Pamela  with 
her  prayers  "  that  the  gods  — 

"  Gave  the  gilt  coach  and  dappled  Flanders  mares, 
The  shining  robes,  rich  jewels,  beds  of  state, 
And,  to  complete  her  bliss,  a  fool  for  mate. 
She  glares  in  balls,  front  boxes,  and  the  ring, 
A  vain,  unquiet,  glitt'ring,  wretched  thing, 
Pride,  pomp,  and  state  but  reach  her  outward  part ; 
She  sighs,  and  is  no  duchess  at  her  heart." 

The  greatness  of  Sophia  Dorothea  was  no  conse- 
quence of  her  prayers,  and  she  was  unlike  the  poet's 
Pamela  in  all  things,  save  that  she  had  "a  fool  for 
mate,"  spent  her  time  in  sighs,  and  was  indeed  "no 
duchess  at  her  heart."  For  a  few  months  after  her 
husband  had  taken  her  to  Hanover,  she  experienced 
perhaps  a  less  degree  of  unhappiness  than  was  ever 
her  lot  subsequently.  Her  open  and  gentle  nature 
won  the  regard  even  of  Ernest  Augustus.  That  is, 

60 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  GEORGE   AND   SOPHIA 

*t  Augustus  —  Similar  Posi- 
-  Misfortune  of  the  Abigail 


i  ad  state  i  rd  part; 

>  duchess  at  her  heart." 

The  gn  f  Sophia  Dorothea  was  no  conse- 

quence of  her  p  :d  she  was  unlike  the  poet's 

Pamela  in  all  things,  save  that  she  had  "a  fool  for 
mate,"  5  hs,  and  was  indeed  "no 

,1  few  months  after 
!  had  tai- 


Sophia,  Princess  Palatine 

Photogravure  from  the  fainting  by  G.  Houtkorst 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  61 

he  paid  her  as  much  regard  as  a  man  so  coarsely 
minded  as  he  was  could  feel  for  one  of  such  true 
womanly  dignity  as  his  daughter-in-law. 

His  respect  for  her,  however,  may  be  best  appre- 
ciated by  the  companionship  to  which  he  sometimes 
subjected  her.  He  more  frequently  saw  her  in  society 
with  the  immoral  Madame  von  Platen  than  in  the 
society  of  his  own  wife.  The  position  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  with  regard  to  this  woman  was  not  unlike 
that  of  Marie  [Antoinette  at  the  court  of  Louis  XV. 
with  regard  to  Madame  du  Barri.  Poor  Marie  Antoi- 
nette was,  in  some  degree,  the  worse  conditioned  of 
the  two,  for  her  own  mother,  the  great  Maria  Theresa, 
held  friendly  intercourse  with  the  king's  "  favourites," 
and  did  not  hesitate,  when  she  had  a  political  purpose 
in  view,  to  address  them  by  letter  in  terms  of  famil- 
iarity, if  not  of  endearment.  By  her  own  mother  she 
was  exposed  to  much  indecent  outrage.  It  was  other- 
wise with  Sophia  Dorothea.  Her  mother  deplored 
her  marriage  as  a  miserable  event,  simply  because  she 
was  aware,  from  the  character  of  George  Louis,  that 
her  husband  would  heap  upon  her  nothing  but  insult 
and  indignity.  Ever  after  the  separation  of  mother 
and  daughter,  the  former  seemed  as  one  doomed  to 
sit  for  ever  beneath  the  shadow  of  a  great  sorrow. 
The  first  child  of  this  marriage  brought  with  him, 
however,  some  transitory  promise  of  felicity.  He 
was  born  at  Hanover,  on  the  3Oth  of  October,  1683, 
and  when  his  father  conferred  on  him  the  names  of 
George  Augustus,  he  expressed  pleasure  at  having 
an  heir,  and  he  even  added  some  words  of  regard  for 
the  mother.  But  expression  of  regard  is  worth  little 
unless  its  sincerity  be  proved  by  action.  It  was  not 


62  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

so  in  the  present  case.  The  second  child  of  this 
marriage  was  a  daughter,  born  in  1684.  She  was 
that  Sophia  Dorothea  who  subsequently  married  the 
King  of  Prussia.  In  tending  these  two  children  the 
mother  found  all  the  happiness  she  ever  experienced 
during  her  married  life.  Soon  after  the  birth  of  her 
daughter,  George  Louis  openly  neglected  and  openly 
exhibited  his  hatred  of  his  wife.  He  lost  no  oppor- 
tunity of  irritating  and  outraging  her,  and  she  could 
not  even  walk  through  the  rooms  of  the  palace  which 
she  called  her  home,  without  encountering  the  aban- 
doned female  favourites  of  her  husband,  whose  pres- 
ence beneath  such  a  roof  was  the  uncleanest  of 
pollutions  and  the  most  flagrant  of  outrages. 

I  have  said  that,  in  some  respects,  the  position  of 
Sophia  Dorothea  at  Hanover  was  not  unlike  that 
of  Marie  Antoinette  at  Versailles.  This  similarity, 
however,  is  perhaps  only  to  be  discovered  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  both  being  subjected  to  the  degrada- 
tion of  intercourse  with  women  of  little  virtue  but  of 
large  influence.  Marie  Antoinette  indeed,  like  Sophia 
Dorothea,  married  a  prince  who,  at  the  best,  contem- 
plated his  wife  with  supreme  indifference,  but  there 
was  this  difference  in  their  respective  destinies  as 
married  women,  —  Marie  Antoinette  gradually  over- 
came her  husband's  want  of  regard,  and  he  who  had 
been  the  coldest  of  bridegrooms  became,  in  after 
years,  the  most  devoted  of  husbands  and  lovers.  It 
was  far  otherwise  with  the  wife  of  George  Louis. 
The  poor  show  of  enforced  ceremony,  beneath  which, 
during  the  first  year  of  his  marriage,  he  hid  his  want 
of  affection  for  a  wife  as  gentle  and  good  as  she  was 
fair  and  accomplished,  was  not  maintained  after  that 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  63 

period.  He  did  not  even  give  himself  the  trouble  to 
conceal  from  her  his  daily  increasing  aversion.  She 
bore  her  fierce  and  bitter  trial  with  calm  dignity  ;  — 
and  she  was  further  unlike  Marie  Antoinette  in  this 
respect,  that  she  was  not  "nearer  her  sex  than  her 
rank ; "  a  pithy  saying  of  Rivarolle's,  which  more 
correctly  describes  the  wife  of  Louis  XVI.  than  even 
Rivarolle  himself  either  suspected  or  understood. 

The  prime  mover  of  the  hatred  of  George  Louis 
for  his  consort  was  Madame  von  Platen,  and  this  fact 
was  hardly  known  to  —  certainly  not  allowed  by  — 
George  Louis  himself.  There  was  one  thing  in  which 
that  individual  had  a  fixed  belief :  his  own  sagacity 
and,  it  may  be  added,  his  own  imaginary  independence 
of  outward  influences.  He  was  profound  in  some 
things,  but,  as  frequently  happens  with  persons  who 
fancy  themselves  deep  in  all,  he  was  very  shallow  in 
many.  The  Dead  Sea  is  said  to  be  in  most  places 
fifteen  hundred  feet  deep,  but  there  are  spots  where 
the  lead  will  find  bottom  at  two  fathoms.  George 
Louis  may  be  compared  with  that  sea.  It  was  often 
impossible  to  divine  his  purpose,  but  quite  as  often 
his  thoughts  were  as  clearly  discernible  as  the  pebbles 
in  the  bed  of  a  transparent  brook.  Madame  von 
Platen  saw  through  him  thoroughly,  and  she  em- 
ployed her  discernment  for  the  furtherance  of  her 
own  detestable  objects. 

The  man  who  hated  Aristides  because  he  was 
called  the  "just,"  was  a  man  with  whose  feelings 
Madame  von  Platen  could  entertain  sympathy.  So- 
phia Dorothea  had  not  merely  contrived  to  win  the 
good  opinion  of  her  mother-in-law,  but  the  warm 
favour  of  Ernest  Augustus.  That  grand  potentate 


64  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

looked  upon  her  as  the  Duchess  of  Burgundy  of  his 
court.  She  was  only  so  inasmuch  as  she  was  affec- 
tionate and  obliging.  In  most  other  respects  it  would 
be  as  correct  to  compare  her  with  Pompadour  as  with 
the  duchess,  who  won  the  regard  and  penetrated  the 
secrets  of  the  Grand  Monarque,  only  to  betray  both. 

The  praise  of  his  daughter-in-law  was  ever  the 
theme  which  hung  on  the  lips  of  Ernest  Augustus, 
and  such  eulogy  was  as  poison  poured  in  the  ears  of 
Madame  von  Platen.  She  dreaded  the  loss  of  her 
own  influence  over  the  father  of  George  Louis,  and 
she  fancied  she  might  preserve  it  by  destroying  the 
happiness  of  the  wife  of  his  son.  Her  hatred  of  that 
poor  lady  had  been  increased  by  a  circumstance  with 
which  she  could  not  be  connected,  but  which  nearly 
concerned  her  mother,  the  Duchess  of  Zell. 

Ernest  Augustus  used  occasionally  to  visit  Madame 
von  Platen  at  her  own  residence.  He  was  an  imita- 
tor of  the  way  of  life  of  Louis  XIV. ;  and  as  that 
monarch  more  than  once  visited  a  "  favourite,"  with  a 
military  escort  attending  him,  trumpets  heralding  his 
passage,  and  his  own  queen  dragged  along  in  his  train, 
so  Ernest  Augustus,  with  diminished  state,  but  with 
more  than  enough  of  publicity,  visited  Madame  von 
Platen.  He  was  more  inclined  to  conversation  with 
her  than  with  his  prime  minister,  her  husband ;  and 
she  had  wit  enough,  if  not  worth,  to  give  warrant  for 
such  preference.  Now  and  then,  however,  the  ducal 
sovereign  would  repair  to  pay  his  homage  to  the  lady, 
without  previous  notice  being  forwarded  of  his  com- 
ing ;  and  it  was  on  one  of  these  occasions  that,  on 
arriving  at  the  mansion,  or  in  the  gardens  of  the  man- 
sion of  his  minister's  spouse,  he  found,  not  the  lady 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  65 

of  the  house,  who  was  absent,  but  her  bright-eyed, 
ordinary-featured,  and  quick-witted  handmaid,  who 
bore  a  name  which  might  have  been  given  to  such 
an  official  in  Elizabethan  plays,  by  Ford  or  Fletcher. 
Her  name  was  "  Use." 

Ernest  Augustus  found  the  wit  of  Use  much  to 
his  taste ;  and  the  delighted  abigail  was  perfectly 
self-possessed,  and  more  brilliant  than  common  in  the 
converse  which  she  sustained  for  the  pleasure  of 
the  sovereign,  and  her  own  expected  profit.  She 
had  just,  it  is  supposed,  come  to  the  point  of  some 
exquisitely  epigrammatic  tale,  for  the  prince  was 
laughing  with  his  full  heart,  and  her  hand  in  his,  and 
the  'tiring  maiden  was  as  radiant  as  successful  wit 
and  endeavour  could  make  her,  when  Madame  von 
Platen  interrupted  the  sparkling  colloquy  by  her 
more  fiery  presence.  She  affected  to  be  overcome 
with  indignation  at  the  boldness  of  a  menial  who 
dared  to  make  merry  with  a  sovereign  duke;  and 
when  poor  Use  had  been  rudely  dismissed  from  the 
two  presences  —  the  one  august  and  the  other  angry 
—  Madame  von  Platen  probably  remonstrated  with 
Ernest  Augustus,  respectfully  or  otherwise,  upon  his 
deplorable  want  of  dignity  and  good  taste. 

But,  to  leave  hypothesis  for  fact,  we  know  that 
revenge  certainly  followed,  whether  remonstrance 
may  or  may  not  have  been  offered.  Ernest  Augustus 
went  to  sojourn  for  a  time  at  one  of  his  rural  palaces, 
and  he  had  no  sooner  left  his  capital  than  Madame 
von  Platen  committed  the  terrified  Use  to  close 
imprisonment  in  the  common  gaol.  The  history  of 
little  German  courts,  as  well  as  novels  and  dramas,  in 
their  illustrations  of  life,  and  in  the  mirror  which  they 


66  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

hold  up  to  nature,  assure  us  that  this  exercise  and 
abuse  of  power  were  not  at  all  uncommon  with  the 
"  favourites  "  of  German  princes.  Their  word  was 
"all  potential  as  the  duke's,"  and  doubtless  Madame 
von  Platen's  authority  was  as  good  warrant  for  a 
Hanoverian  gaoler  to  hold  Use  in  custody,  as  if  he 
had  shut  up  that  maid  who  offended  by  her  wit,  under 
the  sign  manual  of  Ernest  Augustus  himself. 

Use  was  kept  captive,  and  very  shabbily  treated, 
until  Madame  von  Platen  had  resolved  as  to  the 
further  course  which  should  be  ultimately  adopted 
toward  her.  She  could  bring  no  charge  against  her, 
save  a  pretended  accusation  of  lightness  of  conduct 
and  immorality  scandalous  to  Hanoverian  decorum. 
Under  this  charge  she  had  her  old  handmaid  drummed 
out  of  the  town ;  and  if  the  elder  Duchess  Sophia 
heard  the  tap  of  the  drums  which  accompanied  the 
alleged  culprit  to  the  gates,  we  can  only  suppose  that 
she  would  have  expelled  Madame  von  Platen  to  the 
same  music.  But,  in  the  first  place,  the  wives  of 
princes  were  by  no  means  so  powerful  as  their 
favourites  ;  and,  secondly,  the  friend  of  the  philosoph- 
ical Leibnitz  was  too  much  occupied  with  the  sage  to 
trouble  herself  with  the  affairs  which  gave  concern 
to  Madame  von  Platen. 

The  present  affair,  however,  most  nearly  concerned 
poor  Use,  who  found  herself  outside  the  city  walls, 
friendless,  penniless,  with  a  damaged  character,  and 
nothing  to  cover  it  but  the  light  costume  which  she 
had  worn  in  the  process  of  her  march  of  expulsion  to 
the  roll  of  "dry  drums."  When  she  had  found  a 
refuge,  her  first  course  was  to  apply  to  Ernest  Augus- 
tus for  redress.  The  prince,  however,  was  at  once 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  67 

oblivious,  ungrateful,  and  powerless  ;  and  confining 
himself  to  sending  to  the  poor  petitioner  a  paltry 
eleemosynary  half-dozen  of  gold  pieces,  he  forbade 
her  return  to  Hanover,  counselled  her  to  settle  else- 
where, and  congratulated  her  that  she  had  not  re- 
ceived even  rougher  treatment. 

Use,  perhaps,  would  have  quoted  the  Psalmist,  who 
dissuades  men  from  putting  their  trust  in  princes, 
but  for  the  fact  that  she  hoped,  even  yet,  if  not 
from  a  prince,  to  find  succour  from  a  princess.  She 
accordingly  made  full  statement  of  her  case  to  the 
Duchess  of  Zell ;  and  that  lady,  deeming  the  case 
one  of  peculiar  hardship,  and  the  penalty  inflicted  on 
a  giddy  girl  too  unmeasured  for  the  pardonable 
offence  of  amusing  an  old  prince  who  encouraged 
her  to  the  task,  after  much  consideration,  due  weigh- 
ing of  the  statement,  and  befitting  inquiry,  took  the 
offender  into  her  own  service,  and  gave  to  the  exiled 
Hanoverian  a  refuge,  asylum,  and  employment  in 
Zell. 

These  are  but  small  politics,  but  they  illustrate  the 
nature  of  things  as  they  then  existed,  in  bygone 
days,  at  little  German  courts.  They  had,  moreover, 
no  small  influence  on  the  happiness  of  Sophia  Doro- 
thea. Madame  von  Platen  was  enraged  that  the 
mother  of  that  princess  should  have  dared  to  give 
a  home  to  one  whom  she  had  condemned  to  be  home- 
less :  and  she  in  consequence  is  suspected  of  having 
been  fired  with  more  satanic  zeal  to  make  desolate 
the  home  of  the  young  wife.  She  adopted  the  most 
efficient  means  to  arrive  at  such  an  end. 

It  was  the  period  when  Sophia  Dorothea  had  just 
become  the  mother  of  a  daughter  who  bore  her  name, 


68  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

and  who  was  subsequently  queen-consort  of  Prussia. 
It  was  from  this  period  that  George  Louis  openly 
treated  his  wife  with  the  contempt,  and  the  evil 
genius  by  whom  he  was  most  influenced  was  Madame 
von  Platen. 

The  first  attempt  to  estrange  him  permanently 
from  Sophia  Dorothea  was  made  through  her  sister, 
Madame  von  Busche.  The  latter  lady,  previous  to 
her  marriage  with  the  tutor  of  George  Louis,  had 
endeavoured,  with  some  slight  success,  to  fascinate 
his  pupil.  She  embraced  with  alacrity  the  mission 
with  which  she  was  charged,  again  to  throw  such 
meshes  of  fascination  as  she  was  possessed  of 
around  the  heart  of  the  not  over  susceptible  prince. 
If  endeavour  could  merit  or  achieve  success,  the 
attempt  of  this  would-be  charmer  would  have  de- 
served, and  would  have  accomplished,  a  triumph. 
But  George  Louis  stolidly  refused  to  be  charmed, 
and  Madame  von  Busche  gave  up  the  attempt  in  a 
sort  of  offended  despair.  Her  sister,  like  a  true 
genius,  fertile  in  expedients,  and  prepared  for  every 
emergency,  bethought  herself  of  a  simple  circum- 
stance, whereby  she  hoped  to  attain  her  ends.  She 
remembered  that  George  Louis,  though  short  himself 
of  stature,  had  a  predilection  for  tall  women.  At  the 
next  fete  at  which  he  was  present  at  the  mansion  of 
Madame  von  Platen,  he  was  enchanted  by  a  may-pole 
of  a  young  lady,  with  a  name  almost  as  long  as 
her  person,  —  it  was  Ermengarda  Melusina  von  Schu- 
lemberg. 

She  was  more  shrewd  than  witty,  this  "  tall  maw- 
kin,"  as  the  Electress  Sophia  once  called  the  lofty 
Ermengarda  ;  and,  as  George  Louis  was  neither  witty 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  69 

himself,  nor  much  cared  for  wit  in  others,  she  was  the 
better  enabled  to  establish  herself  in  the  most  worth- 
less of  hearts  that  ever  beat  beneath  an  embroidered 
vest.  She  was  an  inimitable  flatterer,  and  in  this  way 
she  fooled  her  victim  to  "  the  very  top  of  his  bent." 
She  exquisitely  cajoled  him,  and  with  exquisite  care- 
lessness did  he  surrender  himself  to  be  cajoled.  Gradu- 
ally, by  watching  his  inclinations,  anticipating  his 
wishes,  admiring  even  his  coarseness,  and  lauding  it 
as  candour,  she  so  won  upon  the  lazily  excited  feel- 
ings of  George  Louis,  that  he  began  to  think  her 
presence  indispensable  to  his  well-being.  If  he 
hunted,  she  was  in  the  field,  the  nearest  to  his 
saddle-bow.  If  he  went  out  to  walk  alone,  he  invari- 
ably fell  in  with  Ermengarda.  At  the  court  theatre, 
when  he  was  present,  the  next  conspicuous  object 
was  the  towering  Von  Schulemberg,  like  Mile. 
Georges,  "in  all  her  diamonds,"  beneath  the  glare 
of  which,  and  the  blazing  impudence  of  their  wearer, 
the  modest  Sophia  Dorothea  was  almost  extinguished. 
Doubly  authorised  would  she  have  been,  as  she 
looked  at  her  unworthy  husband,  to  have  exclaimed, 
as  Alfieri  afterward  did  in  his  autobiography  : 

"  O  picciola  cosa  €  pur  1'uomo." 

It  is  said  of  the  robe  originally  worn  by  the  prophet 
Mahomet,  and  reverently  preserved  at  Mecca,  that  it 
was  annually  washed  in  a  tub  of  clear  water,  which 
was  subsequently  duly  bottled  off,  and  sent  as  holy 
water  to  the  various  princes  of  Islam.  A  fashion 
alleged  to  have  been  adopted  by  Madame  von  Platen, 
is  recalled  to  memory  by  this  matter  of  the  prophet's 
robe. 


70  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

That  estimable  person  had  announced  a  festival, 
to  be  celebrated  at  her  mansion,  which  was  to  sur- 
pass in  splendour  anything  that  had  ever  been  wit- 
nessed by  the  existing  generation.  The  occasion  was 
the  marriage  of  her  sister,  Madame  von  Busche,  who 
had  worried  the  poor  ex-tutor  of  George  Louis  into 
the  grave,  with  General  Wreyke,  a  gallant  soldier, 
equal,  it  would  seem,  to  any  feat  of  daring.  When- 
ever Madame  von  Platen  designed  to  appear  with 
more  than  ordinary  brilliancy  in  her  own  person,  she 
was  accustomed  to  indulge  in  the  extravagant  luxury 
of  a  milk  bath  ;  and  it  was  added  by  the  satirical  or 
the  scandalous,  that  the  milk  which  had  just  lent 
softness  to  her  skin  was  charitably  distributed  among 
the  poor  of  the  district  wherein  she  occasionally 
affected  to  play  the  character  of  Dorcas. 

Be  this  fable  or  not  —  and  very  strange  things 
were  done  in  the  old-fashioned  circles  of  Germany  in 
those  days  —  the  fete  and  the  giver  of  it  were  not 
only  to  be  of  a  splendour  that  had  never  been 
equalled,  but  George  Louis  had  promised  to  grace 
it  with  his  presence,  and  had  even  pledged  himself, 
to  "  walk  a  measure  "  with  the  irresistible  Ermen- 
garda  Melusina  von  Schulemberg.  Madame  von 
Platen  thought  that  her  cup  of  joy  and  pride  and 
revenge  would  be  complete  and  full  to  the  brim,  if 
she  could  succeed  in  bringing  Sophia  Dorothea  to 
the  misery  of  witnessing  a  spectacle,  the  only  true 
significance  of  which  was  that  the  faithless  George 
Louis  publicly  acknowledged  the  gigantic  Ermen- 
garda  for  his  "favourite." 

More  activity  was  employed  to  encompass  the 
desired  end  than  if  the  aim  in  view  had  been  one  of 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  71 

good  purpose.  It  so  far  succeeded  that  Sophia 
Dorothea  intimated  her  intention  of  being  present 
at  the  festival  given  by  Madame  von  Platen  ;  and 
when  the  latter  lady  received  the  desired  and  wel- 
come intelligence,  she  was  conscious  of  an  enjoyment 
that  seemed  to  her  an  antepast  of  Paradise. 

The  eventful  night  at  length  arrived.  The  bride 
had  exchanged  rings  with  the  bridegroom,  congratu- 
lations had  been  duly  paid,  and  the  floor  was  ready 
for  the  dancers,  and  nothing  lacked  but  the  presence 
of  Sophia  Dorothea.  There  walked  the  proudly 
eminent  Von  Schulemberg,  looking  blandly  down 
upon  George  Louis,  who  held  her  by  the  hand  ;  and 
there  stood  the  impatient  Von  Platen,  eager  that  the 
wife  of  that  light-o'-love  cavalier  should  arrive,  and 
be  crushed  by  the  spectacle.  Still  she  came  not ; 
and  finally  her  lady  of  honour,  the  Countess  von 
Knesebeck,  arrived,  not  as  her  attendant  but  her 
representative,  with  excuses  for  the  non-appearance 
of  her  mistress,  whom  indisposition  (unfeigned  indis- 
position to  be  a  witness  of  a  suspected  sight)  de- 
tained at  her  own  hearth. 

The  course  of  the  festival  was  no  longer  delayed ; 
in  it  the  bride  and  bridegroom  were  forgotten,  and 
George  and  Ermengarda  were  the  hero  and  heroine 
of  the  hour.  After  that  hour,  no  one  doubted  as 
to  the  bad  eminence  achieved  by  that  lady  ;  and  so 
narrowly  and  sharply  observant  was  the  lynx-eyed 
Von  Knesebeck  of  all  that  passed  between  her  mis- 
tress's husband  and  that  husband's  mistress,  that 
when  she  returned  to  her  duties  of  dame  (fatours, 
she  unfolded  a  narrative  that  inflicted  a  stab  in  every 
phrase,  and  tore  the  heart  of  the  despairing  listener. 


72  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

But  court  life  in  Germany  was  at  this,  as  also  at 
an  earlier  and  till  a  later  period,  one  of  unmixed  ex- 
travagance and  viciousness.  A  few  of  the  social 
traits  of  such  life  will  be  found  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  V. 

COURT    LIFE     IN     GERMANY THE     ELECTORATE     OF 

HANOVER 

Vienna,  the  Most  Dissolute  Capital  in  Europe  —  Extravagance  and 
Profligacy  of  Augustus  the  Strong,  afterward  King  of  Poland  — 
Fete  in  Honour  of  His  Mistress,  Maria  Aurora  K6nigsmark  — 
The  Alchemist,  and  His  Fate  —  Gorgeous  Wrecks  of  His  Reign 
at  Dresden  —  Count  Bruhl's  Profligate  Expenditure  —  The  Court 
of  Bavaria — The  Sporting  Propensities  of  the  Electress  Maria 
Amelia  —  Her  Fondness  for  Dogs  —  Reception  of  George  the 
First's  Mistresses  by  the  English  Mob  —  Infamy  of  the  German 
Ecclesiastical  Princes  —  Expulsion  of  the  Duke  of  Mecklenburg. 
Schwerin  —  His  Matrimonial  Adventures  —  His  Apologist  Leib- 
nitz —  Poverty  of  Prince  Rupert  at  His  Death,  and  Lottery  for 
His  Jewels  —  The  House  of  Hanover  Ranges  Itself  against 
France  —  Ernest  Augustus  Created  Elector  —  Domestic  Rebel- 
lion of  His  Son  Maximilian  —  His  Accomplice,  Count  Molcke, 
Beheaded  —  The  Electors  of  Germany. 

THE  extravagance  of  Madame  von  Platen,  men- 
tioned in  the  last  chapter,  was  a  reflex  of  that  which 
made  some  of  the  sovereign  courts  of  her  day  most 
sadly  illustrious.  Louis  XIV.  was  not  the  only  mon- 
arch guilty  of  impoverishing  the  people  by  living  in  a 
splendour  which  made  his  country  bankrupt.  The 
German  courts  needed  not,  and  did  not  turn  to  France 
for  a  precedent  of  superb  wickedness.  The  imperial 
household  at  Vienna  was  a  high  school,  whereat  the 
minor  potentates  of  Germany  might  take  degrees  in 
extravagance  and  profligacy.  Not  less  than  forty 

73 


74  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

thousand  individuals  were  attached  to  the  service  of 
that  house,  and  the  licentious  habits  and  coarse  tone 
of  the  majority  of  these  servants  of  the  emperor,  from 
the  noble  to  the  lackey,  not  only  had  an  ill  effect  upon 
contemporary  society,  but  may  be  said  to  be  felt  even 
now  in  Vienna  ;  the  most  dissolute  capital  in  Europe, 
where  the  aristocracy  point  in  scorn  to  the  citizens  as 
abandoned  to  vice,  and  the  citizens  scowl  at  the  aris- 
tocracy as  the  setters  of  bad  example. 

In  the  times  of  which  I  am  treating,  there  was  not 
the  minutest  count  holding  sovereignty  over  a  few 
acres  who  did  not  maintain  an  ambassadorial  estab- 
lishment at  Vienna,  the  expenses  of  which  swallowed 
up  a  very  considerable  portion  of  the  state  repre- 
sented. These  legates  of  their  lords,  and  often  with 
their  lords,  and  these  lords'  "  ladies  "  in  their  com- 
pany, were  busily  employed  in  the  imperial  city  in 
the  solemn  occupations  of  feasting,  drinking,  dancing, 
gazing  at  fireworks,  and  other  business  which  will 
less  bear  mentioning.  Two  hogsheads  of  Tokay  wine 
were  daily  consumed  for  soaking  the  bread  which  was 
given  to  the  imperial  parrots  !  The  empress's  nightly 
possets  required  twelve  gallons  of  the  same  wine. 
Not  that  the  imperial  appetite  was  equal  to  such 
consumption,  but  that  the  kitchen  supplied  that 
quantity  to  the  household  generally  ;  for  in  the 
eighteenth  century  a  German  noble  or  his  consort 
no  more  thought  of  going  to  sleep  without  the  "  sac- 
ramental "  posset,  than  an  English  squire  of  the 
same  period. 

I  have  alluded  in  another  page  to  the  "  protector  " 
of  the  sister  of  Count  Konigsmark,  Augustus  the 
Strong,  —  strong  in  everything  but  virtue,  and  utterly 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  75 

worthless  as  man  or  monarch  in  all  besides.  His 
reign,  after  he  became  King  of  Poland,  was  a  long 
course  of  brutal  excess  in  every  shape,  and  in  some 
cases  outraging  nature  as  much  as  was  done  in  the 
brutal  excesses  of  Caligula.  He  left  behind  him 
352  children  dependent  on  the  state,  but  whose  claims 
the  state  soon  refused  to  recognise. 

His  extravagant  taste  exceeded  even  that  of  the 
masters  of  Vienna  or  Versailles.  In  honour  of  Maria 
Aurora  Kb'nigsmark,  the  queen  of  the  harem,  and  the 
only  "  favourite "  of  this  crowned  brute  who  ever 
retained  in  her  bad  eminence  the  refinement  of  char- 
acter and  conduct  which  had  distinguished  her  before 
her  elevation,  —  in  honour  of  this  "  favourite  "  he  gave 
a  festival  on  the  Elbe,  at  which  Neptune  appeared  in 
a  sea-shell  (in  very  shallow  water),  surrounded  by  a 
fleet  of  frigates,  gondolas,  and  gunboats,  all  of  true 
model  dimensions,  and  manned  by  crews  who  might 
have  sung  in  chorus  the  song  from  "  La  Promise," 
"tna  veste,  ma  veste"  so  gay,  glorious,  glittering,  and 
unseamanlike  were  they,  in  their  satin  jackets,  their 
silk  stockings,  and  their  paste-diamond  shoe-buckles. 
Soldiers,  or  civilians  in  the  masquerade  of  soldiers,  of 
all  nations  under  the  sun,  and  all  splendidly  attired, 
lined  the  banks  of  the  river.  The  festival  lasted 
throughout  a  long  day,  and  when  night  set  in,  a  huge 
allegorical  picture,  occupying  six  thousand  yards, 
nearly  four  miles  of  canvas,  was  illuminated  by  blaz- 
ing piles  of  odoriferous  woods.  On  that  day  was 
squandered,  in  honour  of  a  royal  concubine,  as  much 
wealth  as  would  have  fed  and  clothed  all  the  hungry 
and  destitute  in  Dresden  for  a  whole  year. 

Nor  was  this  a  solitary  instance  of  the  profligate 


76  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

extravagance  of  this  monarch.  On  the  occasion  of  a 
visit  to  his  court  by  Frederick  William  of  Prussia  and 
the  crown  prince,  he  expended  $5,000  in  porcelain 
vases  for  the  adornment  of  their  bedchambers,  and 
gave  them  a  gipsy  party  at  Miihlberg,  where  the 
rural  amusements  of  a  few  hours  absorbed  not  less 
than  three  millions  of  dollars. 

Augustus  delighted  in  monster  fetes,  with  all  sorts 
of  monster  appliances ;  and  one  of  these  gigantic  fes- 
tivals is  spoken  of,  at  which  a  cake  was  placed  before 
the  guests  twenty-eight  feet  long  by  twelve  broad,  the 
sides  of  which  were  cut  into  by  a  gaudy  official, 
armed  with  a  silver  axe.  Into  the  lap  of  one  of  his 
favourites,  Augustus  poured  no  less  a  sum  than 
twenty  millions  of  dollars.  The  fortunate  recipient 
was  the  Countess  von  Kosel.  He  spent  the  same 
sum  in  welcoming  to  his  dominions  the  daughter  of 
the  Emperor  Joseph  I.,  newly  espoused  to  his  son. 
The  festivities  were  "  stupendous,"  in  character,  dura- 
tion, and  extravagance.  He  met  the  bride  with  a 
whole  army  at  his  back  to  give  her  welcome;  and 
a  host,  nearly  as  large,  of  courtiers,  players,  min- 
strels, and  dancers,  all  exerting  themselves  in  their 
several  capacities  to  win  a  smile  of  approbation 
from  the  lady,  who  looked  in  melancholy  on  the 
show. 

She  must  have  been  weary  of  it  before  it  was  half 
over,  for  it  dragged  on,  in  gorgeous  ponderosity, 
through  a  whole  month.  Day  after  day  the  festival 
was  renewed,  and  there  was  more  revelry  in  Dresden 
than  there  was  in  Babylon  when  Alexander  entered 
it ;  and  of  much  the  same  degree  of  uncleanness  too. 
To  crown  the  whole,  Augustus  and  his  court  appeared 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  77 

in  the  guise  of  heathen  deities ;  thus  rivalling  that 
Augustus  of  Rome  and  his  friends,  who  sat  down  to 
the  banquet  in  the  likeness  of  the  gods  and  goddesses 
of  Olympus,  —  less  dignified,  indeed,  than  they,  but 
twice  as  beastly. 

His  conduct  might  fairly  be  described  as  that  of  a 
maniac,  were  it  not  for  one  circumstance.  He  flung 
gold  about  with  a  reckless  prodigality  which  betokened 
insanity,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that,  at  the  very 
period  of  his  doing  so,  he  entertained  the  conviction 
that  he  was  on  the  point  of  tearing  the  veil  before 
the  great  arcanum  of  chemistry,  mastering  the 
knowledge  connected  with  the  transmutation  of 
metals,  and  becoming  the  maker  of  gold,  to  an 
extent  limited  only  by  his  necessities. 

For  this  purpose  he  maintained  an  alchemist  in  his 
palace.  The  professional  gentleman,  so  calling  him- 
self, was  right  royally  lodged  as  regarded  his  person, 
and  right  profusely  provided  as  respected  his  voca- 
tion. His  apartments  were  furnished  with  a  splendour 
which  might  have  dazzled  an  emperor,  and  his  labora- 
tory was  a  glittering  chaos  of  costly  vessels,  means, 
and  appliances,  —  such  as  befitted  the  arch-deceiver 
of  a  king  foolish  enough  to  be  deceived. 

The  experiments  were  being  carried  on  while 
Augustus  was  as  insanely  experimenting  on  the 
patience  of  his  people.  The  alchemist,  however, 
soon  encountered  a  swifter  and  more  hideous  ruin 
than  ultimately  fell  upon  the  head  of  Augustus  him- 
self. His  patron  became  impatient  and  more  exact- 
ing than  ever ;  the  magician  more  tricky,  more 
boastful  of  success,  and  less  satisfactory  in  realisation 
of  his  boasting.  His  specimens  were  pronounced 


78  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

counterfeit,  his  gold  was  scornfully  rejected  by  the 
goldsmiths  of  the  capital,  and,  detected  as  a  cheat, 
he  was  beheaded  by  the  order  of  him  who  had  hoped 
to  profit  by  his  address. 

Dresden  is  yet  strewn  with  the  gorgeous  wrecks 
of  the  profligate  reign  of  Augustus.  The  "Green 
Vaults "  of  the  palace,  crowded  as  they  are  with 
gems  and  jewelry,  and  rich  metals  wrought  into 
grotesque  figures  ;  the  huge  ostrich  cups,  the  gigan- 
tic pearls,  the  musical  clocks,  and  toys  and  trifles, 
for  which  a  "king's  ransom"  was  less  than  the 
purchase-money,  should  awake  in  the  mind  of  the 
beholder  not  so  much  of  admiration  for  the  collec- 
tion, as  of  disgust  and  amazement  at  the  thoughtless 
extravagance  of  him  who  acquired  it  with  the  money 
entrusted  to  his  dishonest  stewardship.  If  the  mem- 
ory of  Augustus  the  Strong  can  ever  be  dwelt  upon 
with  any  measure  of  respect,  it  is  perhaps  when  the 
visitor  at  Dresden  contemplates  the  gallery  of  pic- 
tures there,  of  which  he  was  the  founder.  In  his 
profligate  expenditure  he  had  a  worthy  imitator  in 
Count  Briihl,  the  minister  of  his  indolent  son  and 
successor,  Augustus  III.  His  wardrobe  could  have 
supplied  half  the  great  families  in  Europe  with  cos- 
tumes ;  his  collection  of  embroidered  shoes  was  a 
sight  for  all  Saxony ;  and  his  museum  of  Parisian 
wigs,  arranged  in  chronological  order,  was  the  pride 
of  all  the  petit-maitres  who  were  curious  in  perukes. 
The  court  of  Bavaria  at  the  beginning  of  the  last 
century  set  no  better  example  to  the  people,  on 
whose  love  and  allegiance  it  made  a  claim  which  was 
but  shabbily  reverenced.  The  little  and  delicate 
electress,  Maria  Amelia,  had  the  propensities  of  a 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  79 

gigantic  rout.  She  was  delicate  only  in  person, 
not  in  mind ;  but  mind  and  body  were  similarly 
"  little "  in  other  respects.  She  was  an  excellent 
shot,  followed  the  chase  with  the  zest  of  the  keenest 
sportsman,  and  would  toil  half  the  day,  across  ridge 
and  furrow,  or  up  to  her  knees  in  mud,  in  pursuit  of 
the  game,  among  which  she  made  such  deadly  havoc. 
At  these  times,  and  often  when  the  occasion  was  not 
warrant  for  the  fashion,  she  appeared  in  public  in 
male  attire,  generally  of  green  cloth,  her  brilliant 
complexion  heightened  by  a  brilliantly  powdered 
white  peruke.  She  loved  dogs  as  well  as  she  did 
men,  rather  better  perhaps,  on  the  whole ;  and  was 
never  more  pleased  than  when  she  dined  in  no  better 
company  than  with  a  dozen  of  these  canine  favourites, 
whose  unceremonious  clearing  of  the  dishes,  before 
their  hostess  could  help  herself,  only  excited  her 
hearty  laughter. 

There  were  occasions,  however,  on  which  she  was 
given  to  anything  rather  than  laughter,  and  chiefly 
when  she  encountered  the  favourites  of  her  husband. 
On  these  she  had  no  mercy ;  and  her  dog-whip  was 
more  than  once  applied  to  the  shoulders  of  shame- 
less rivals,  —  which  had  perhaps  better  have  been 
applied  to  those  of  the  unworthy  husband,  on 
whose  smiles  and  hard  gold  they  lived  in  splendid 
infamy. 

Other  German  courts  were  marked  and  disgraced 
by  scenes  of  similar  profligacy ;  and  that  of  Hanover 
forms  no  exception,  although  it  ceased  sooner  than 
the  others  to  be  so  distinguished.  This  desirable 
consummation  was  not  a  result  of  greater  cleanliness 
of  manner,  but  of  a  transportation  of  the  uncleanness 


8o  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

to  another  locality  ;  and  the  court  of  Hanover  no  longer 
presented  an  evil  example  to  the  people,  because  at 
a  later  period  George  I.,  the  unworthy  husband  of 
Sophia  Dorothea,  removed  in  1714,  "with  all  his 
mistresses,"  to  this,  the  favoured  country,  which 
was  hardly  grateful  for  the  acquisition. 

The  lack  of  gratitude  was  made  manifest  enough 
by  the  reply  of  "  First  Citizen,"  in  a  dramatic  tumult 
in  the  street  raised  by  the  arrogance  of  these  women. 
"  Worthy  folks !  "  said  one  of  them,  in  broken  Eng- 
lish, "we  come  here  for  all  your  goods."  "Yes!" 
roared  "First  Citizen,"  "and  for  all  our  chattels  too," 
a  remark  not  far  from  the  truth ;  for  the  mistresses 
of  the  first  two  Georges  were  supported  out  of  the 
funds  raised  by  taxation  of  the  people.  But  we  are 
anticipating  events. 

The  ecclesiastical  princes  were  not  a  jot  behind 
their  secular  highnesses  in  glaring  infamy  of  conduct. 
They  scorned  and  outraged  public  opinion,  as  they 
did  the  laws  against  clerical  luxury  and  immorality 
enacted  by  the  Council  of  Trent.  The  debauchery 
and  profligacy  of  the  higher  orders  of  the  priesthood 
(mostly  sons  of  princely  families)  were  appalling. 
An  instance  of  their  unseemliness  of  conduct  has 
been  cited  from  Duclos's  memoirs,  wherein  mention 
is  made  of  a  want  of  decency  manifested  by  the 
Prince  Archbishop  of  Cologne,  when  that  electoral 
dignitary  was  sojourning  at  Versailles.  He  gave 
notice  that  he  would  preach  in  the  Royal  Chapel  on 
the  ist  of  April,  when  a  large  and  august  auditory 
assembled  to  do  honour  to  the  occasion.  The 
preacher,  we  are  told,  ascended  the  pulpit,  and 
bowed  gravely  to  the  audience;  then  shouting, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  81 

"  April  fools  all ! "  he  ran  down  the  stairs  amidst 
the  laughter  of  the  court,  and  the  clang  of  horns, 
trumpets,  and  kettle-drums. 

It  was  a  strange  time,  when  men  were  allowed  to 
have  their  particular  views,  and  women  their  pe- 
culiar faults,  without  much  censure  resulting,  pro- 
vided they  respected  certain  limits.  In  this  they 
were  like  the  pagans,  among  whom  a  woman  might 
swear  for  ever  by  Castor,  and  a  man  only  by 
Hercules,  while  ^Edepol  was  an  execratory  phrase 
common  to  both. 

Among  the  instances  of  German  social  life  in  the 
higher  classes  at  this  period,  may  be  cited  the  case  of 
the  Duke  of  Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  who,  driven  out 
of  his  dukedom  by  the  hatred  of  his  oppressed  sub- 
jects, took  up  his  residence  in  Paris,  about  the  year 
1672.  The  duke  had  been  married  to  a  Protestant 
princess,  of  whom,  growing  weary,  he  divorced  him- 
self from  her,  for  no  other  reason  than  that  he  had 
seen  a  Catholic  princess  who  pleased  him,  for  the 
moment,  better  than  his  own  wife.  He  married  this 
second  lady,  after  first  making  public  profession  of 
his  conversion  to  the  Church  of  Rome.  Not  a  very 
long  period  elapsed  before  he  became  more  weary  of 
the  new  love  than  he  had  ever  been  of  the  old.  He 
was  as  tired  of  the  faith,  by  accepting  which  he  had 
gained  the  lady  ;  and  in  an  affected  horror  of  having 
committed  some  terrible  sin,  he  immediately  set 
about  procuring  a  divorce.  It  was  no  difficult  mat- 
ter ;  and  no  less  a  man,  judge  and  philosopher  than 
the  great  "  Leibnitz,"  less  influenced,  it  is  said,  by  a 
desire  to  disarm  his  foe  than  by  certain  juristic 
sophistries,  decided  in  favour  of  the  divorce,  in  viola- 


82  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

tion  of  all  law,  and  to  the  ineffable  disgust  of  all 
honest  men. 

But  if  princes  and  people  were  forgetful  of  duty,  it 
was  perhaps,  in  part  at  least,  because  their  teachers, 
priests,  and  philosophers  either  failed  to  instruct 
them,  or  neglected  to  make  example  add  double  force 
to  precept.  There  was  no  man  in  Hanover  so 
honoured  as  this  Leibnitz ;  but  he  was  honoured 
more  for  his  intellectual  than  his  moral  worth. 
There  had  been  no  more  unreserved  eulogist  and 
flatterer  of  Louis  XIV.  than  he,  but  at  the  bidding 
of  Ernest  Augustus,  who  had  acquired  reputation  as 
patriot  and  general  by  the  share  he  had  taken  in  the 
war  against  France,  Leibnitz  attacked  the  Grande 
Monarque  in  a  satirical  pamphlet,  entitled  "  The 
Most  Christian  Mars,"  in  which  he  miserably  suc- 
ceeded in  showing  how  wittily  a  clever  man  might 
argue  against  his  own  convictions. 

The  father-in-law  of  Sophia  Dorothea  deserves 
to  have  it  said  of  him  that,  however  immoral  a  man 
he  may  have  been,  he  was  a  more  honest  man  than 
Leibnitz.  When  Ernest  Augustus  was  aspiring  to 
the  electorate,  and  the  emperor  was  as  desirous 
to  form  a  united  empire  of  amalgamated  Catholics 
and  Protestants,  Leibnitz,  to  further  the  duke's  pur- 
pose, wrote  a  pamphlet  on  the  points  of  difference 
between  the  two  churches,  and  on  the  principles 
which  should  form  the  basis  and  the  bonds  of  a 
common  religion  and  a  common  church.  The  Prot- 
estant philosopher  preferred  to  publish  this  pam- 
phlet anonymously,  as  the  author  of  it  so  framed  his 
arguments  as  to  let  his  readers  suppose  that  he  was  a 
Catholic.  The  duke  refused  to  sanction  this  dis- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  83 

honesty,  and  the  pamphlet  was  not  published  until 
after  the  author's  death.  It  appeared  as  the  "  The- 
ological System  "  of  Leibnitz,  and  there  was  not  an 
argument  in  it  which  was  the  result  of  that  author's 
conviction.  It  was  the  boast  of  this  philosopher,  that 
he  was  autodidactos,  —  self-taught.  As  pupil,  it 
must  be  confessed  that  he  sometimes  had  but  a  very 
indifferent  preceptor. 

While  on  the  subject  of  social  traits  of  the  period, 
I  may  not  inaptly  notice  one  in  England.  It  has 
been  already  observed,  that  on  the  arrival  of  George 
Louis  in  England,  to  ask  for  the  hand  of  the  Princess 
Anne,  he  was  indebted  to  his  gouty  and  still  fiery 
uncle,  Rupert,  for  some  attentions.  In  1683,  the 
gallant  prince  died  too  poor  to  leave  wherewith  to 
pay  his  debts  !  A  plan  was  accordingly  proposed, 
whereby  the  necessary  sum  was  to  be  raised  by  the 
disposing  of  the  prince's  jewels  by  lottery.  There 
had,  however,  been  so  much  cheating  practised  in 
matters  of  this  sort,  that  the  public  would  take  no 
shares  in  this  particular  and  princely  lottery,  unless 
the  king  himself  would  guarantee  that  all  should  be 
conducted  fairly  and  honestly,  and  also  that  Mr. 
Francis  Child,  the  then  eminent  goldsmith  and 
banker  of  Temple  Bar,  should  be  responsible  for 
the  "respection  adventures;"  that  is,  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  tickets.  This  stipulation  proposed  by  the 
public  appears  to  have  been  accepted  by  the  govern- 
ment, for  in  the  London  Gazette  of  October  i,  1683, 
appears  an  advertisement,  which  runs  as  follows : 
"  These  are  to  give  notice,  that  the  jewels  of  his  late 
Royal  Highness,  Prince  Rupert,  have  been  particularly 
valued  by  Mr.  Isaac  Legouche,  Mr.  Christopher 


84  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

Rosse,  and  Mr.  Richard  Beauvoir,  jewellers, — the 
whole  amounting  to  .£20,000,  and  will  be  sold  by 
way  of  lottery;  each  lot  to  be  £5.  The  biggest 
prize  will  be  a  great  pearl  necklace,  valued  at  .£3,000, 
and  none  less  than  £100.  A  printed  particular  of 
each  appraisement,  with  their  divisions  into  lots,  will 
be  delivered  gratis  by  Mr.  Francis  Child,  of  Temple 
Bar,  London,  into  whose  hands,  such  as  are  willing  to 
be  adventurers  are  desired  to  pay  their  money,  on  or 
before  the  first  day  of  November  next.  As  soon  as 
the  whole  sum  is  paid  in,  a  short  day  will  be  ap- 
pointed (which,  it  is  hoped,  will  be  before  Christmas), 
and  notified  in  the  Gazette,  for  the  drawing  thereof, 
which  will  be  done  in  his  Majesty's  presence,  who  is 
pleased  to  declare  that  he  himself  will  see  all  the 
prizes  put  in  among  the  blanks,  and  that  the  whole 
will  be  managed  with  equity  and  fairness,  nothing 
being  intended  but  the  sale  of  the  said  jewels  at 
a  moderate  value.  And  it  is  further  notified,  for  the 
satisfaction  of  all  as  shall  be  adventurers,  that  the 
said  Mr.  Child  shall  and  will  stand  obliged  to  each  of 
them  for  their  several  adventures ;  and  that  each 
adventurer  shall  receive  their  (sic)  money  back,  if  the 
said  lottery  be  not  drawn  and  finished  before  the  first 
day  of  February  next."  At  a  later  period,  the  Gazette 
announces  that  "the  king  will  probably,  to-morrow, 
in  the  Banqueting  House,  see  all  ,the  blanks  told  over, 
that  they  may  not  exceed  their  number,  and  that  the 
papers  on  which  the  prizes  are  to  be  written  shall  be 
rolled  up  in  his  presence,  and  that  a  child,  appointed 
either  by  his  Majesty  or  the  adventurers,  shall  draw 
the  prizes."  If  the  king  had  never  done  worse  than 
to  preside  at  the  drawing  of  a  lottery  for  the  payment 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  85 

of  the  debts  of  his  cousin,  the  uncle  of  George  Louis, 
we  might  say  that  he  was  undignified,  but  not  that 
he  was,  as  he  really  was,  ignoble  and  graceless  ;  more 
refined,  perhaps,  but  not  less  debauched,  than  Augus- 
tus of  Saxony. 

But,  to  return  finally  to  Hanover:  while  Sophia 
Dorothea  was  daily  growing  more  unhappy,  her 
father-in-law  was  growing  more  ambitious,  and 
the  prospects  of  her  husband  more  brilliant.  The 
younger  branch  of  Brunswick  was  outstripping  the 
elder  in  dignity,  and  not  merely  an  electoral  but 
a  kingly  crown  seemed  the  prize  they  were  destined 
to  attain.  A  few  brief  paragraphs  will  serve  to  show 
how  this  was  effected,  before  we  once  more  take  up 
the  personal  history  of  Sophia  Dorothea. 

Whatever  opinion  may  be  formed  with  respect  to 
the  opinions  and  feelings  of  the  Hanover  family  in 
reference  to  its  being  recognised  in  the  line  of  legal 
succession  to  the  crown  of  England,  it  is  pretty  well 
ascertained  that  Burnet  was  the  first,  and  probably 
not  without  being  commissioned  to  the  task,  who 
seriously  opened  the  subject  with  the  family,  and  that 
through  the  Hanoverian  minister  at  The  Hague. 
Burnet,  in  1686,  was  residing  at  the  latter  place,  the 
friend  and  agent  of  William  of  Orange,  and  one  of 
the  most  active  adversaries  of  James  II.,  whose  aver- 
sion and  perhaps  dread  of  that  busy  ecclesiastic  were 
not  without  foundation. 

In  the  year  1686,  the  Hanoverian  minister  at  The 
Hague  was  acting  in  strict  obedience  to  the  orders  of 
his  master,  Ernest  Augustus,  by  rather  supporting 
than  opposing  the  ambitious  views  of  France.  Louis 
XIV.  had  so  degraded  England  as  to  make  Charles 


86  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

II.  his  pensionary,  and  the  French  monarch  now 
looked  upon  James  as  his  ally,  ready  to  follow  whither- 
soever the  King  of  France  was  disposed  to  lead  the 
way.  The  union  of  these  two  Roman  Catholic  mon- 
archs,  if  carried  out  to  the  ends  contemplated  by 
them,  threatened  to  overthrow  both  the  religious  and 
civil  liberties  of  every  country  over  which  their  influ- 
ence could  be  made  to  extend.  It  was  especially 
threatening  to  the  princes  of  the  Protestant  faith, 
and  particularly  so  to  Holland.  To  destroy  this  union 
would  be  not  only  to  rescue  Holland  from  the  perils 
which  threatened  her,  but  would,  perhaps,  open  the 
throne  of  England  to  a  Protestant  prince.  This 
prince  could  not  be  looked  for  in  the  line  of  Charles 
I.,  for  the  children  of  his  daughter,  the  Duchess  of 
Orleans,  were  Romanists ;  whereas,  failing  other 
branches  of  the  family  (the  probable  nature  of  which 
failure  has  already  been  adverted  to),  the  line  which 
might  hope  to  inherit  the  crown  was  to  be  found  in 
the  immediate  descendants  of  James  I.,  through  his 
daughter,  Elizabeth,  the  Queen  of  Bohemia,  whose 
daughter  Sophia  was  married  to  Ernest  Augustus  of 
Hanover. 

When  Burnet  found  the  minister  of  the  latter 
prince  offending  the  States  General  of  Holland  by  his 
tacit  support  of  the  views  of  France,  he  at  once  saw 
the  false  position  of  the  minister  who  was  acting  in 
obedience  to  the  instructions  of  his  master,  but 
in  opposition  to  his  own  sentiments.  It  was  no  diffi- 
cult task  for  Burnet  to  prove  to  this  diplomatist  that, 
by  supporting  the  views  of  France,  he  was  destroying 
the  prospects  of  Hanover ;  whereas  if  it  was  his 
desire  to  promote  the  influence  and  glory,  and  to 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  87 

elevate  the  fortunes  of  the  latter  house,  his  course 
was  clear,  simple,  patriotic,  and  profitable.  Opposi- 
tion to  France  on  the  part  of  Hanover  would  be 
popularly  acknowledged  with  something  more  than 
empty  gratitude  in  England,  and  the  time  might 
come  when  such  opposition  would  receive  as  splendid 
a  recompense  as  prince  or  patriot  could  desire. 

It  is  easy  to  believe  that  William  approved  of  a 
communication  of  such  a  nature,  made,  as  Burnet 
protests,  without  being  otherwise  than  self-prompted 
thereto.  The  immediate  result  would  be  to  secure 
an  ally  for  Holland,  and  William  might  safely  leave 
ulterior  contingencies  to  Providence  and  time. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  Burnet 
was  eminently  successful  in  his  object  with  the 
Hanoverian  minister.  The  latter  appears  not  only 
to  have  communicated  what  passed  to  his  sovereign, 
but  to  have  added  comments  thereto  which  carried 
conviction  to  the  mind  of  Ernest  Augustus.  This 
conviction  is  seen  by  the  result  which  followed. 
Hanover,  in  1688,  ranged  herself  with  the  European 
coalition,  that  is,  with  England,  Holland,  and  the 
German  Empire,  against  France. 

There  was  true  "definite  policy"  in  this  act. 
Ernest  Augustus  was  bound  indeed  to  supply  a  con- 
tingent to  the  emperor  whenever  the  latter  might 
call  for  such  aid  in  behalf  of  the  empire ;  but  he 
was  not  satisfied  with  this  alone ;  his  own  territory 
was  not  threatened,  and  it  was  too  far  away  from 
the  stage  whereon  the  great  drama  was  being  played, 
or  was  about  to  be  played  out,  to  give  him  fears 
concerning  the  inviolability  of  his  frontier.  He 
acted,  however,  as  though  he  had  as  fierce  a  quarrel 


88  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

with  Louis  as  the  more  powerful  belligerents  opposed 
to  that  monarch.  He  recalled  his  minister  from 
Paris,  gave  passports  to  the  French  ambassador  at 
Hanover,  and  in  short  played  his  grand  coup  for  an 
electorate  now,  and  a  throne  in  futurity. 

To  be  elevated  to  the  electorate  had  certainly 
been  long  the  dearest  among  the  more  immediate 
objects  of  his  ambition.  When  his  elder  brother 
John  Frederick  died  childless,  and  left  him  the 
principalities  of  Calemberg  and  Grubenhagen,  with 
Hanover  for  a  "residenz,"  he  hailed  an  increase  of 
influence  which  he  hoped  to  see  heightened  by  secur- 
ing the  duchy  of  Zell  also  to  his  family.  He  had 
determined  that  George  Louis  should  succeed  to 
Hanover  and  Zell  united.  In  other  words,  he  estab- 
lished primogeniture,  recognised  his  eldest  son  as 
heir  to  all  his  land,  and  only  awarded  to  his  other 
sons  moderate  appendages  whereby  to  support  a 
dignity  which  he  considered  sufficiently  splendid  by 
the  glory  which  it  would  receive,  by  reflection,  from 
the  head  of  the  house. 

This  arrangement  by  no  means  suited  the  views 
of  one  of  Ernest's  sons,  Maximilian.  He  had  no 
inclination  whatever  to  borrow  glory  from  the  better 
fortune  of  his  brother,  and  was  resolved,  if  it  might 
be,  to  achieve  splendour  by  his  own.  He  protested 
loudly  against  the  accumulation  of  the  family  terri- 
torial estates  upon  the  eldest  heir ;  claimed  his  own 
share ;  and  even  raised  a  species  of  domestic  rebel- 
lion against  his  sire,  to  which  weight,  without  peril, 
was  given  by  the  adhesion  of  a  couple  of  confed- 
erates, Count  Molcke,  and  a  conspirator  of  burgher 
degree. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  89 

Ernest  Augustus  treated  "  Max  "  like  a  rude  child. 
He  put  him  under  arrest  in  the  paternal  palace,  and 
confined  the  filial  rebel  to  the  mild  imprisonment  of 
his  own  room.  Maximilian  was  as  obstinate  as  either 
Henry  the  Dog,  or  Marcus  the  Violent,  and  he  not 
only  opposed  his  sire's  wishes  with  respect  to  the 
aggrandisement  of  the  family  by  the  enriching  of 
the  heir  apparent,  but  went  counter  to  him  in  matters 
of  religion,  and  in  after  years  was  not  only  a  good 
Jacobite,  but  he  also  conformed  to  the  faith  of  the 
Stuarts,  and  Maximilian  ultimately  died,  a  tolerable 
Catholic,  in  the  service  of  the  emperor. 

In  the  meanwhile,  his  domestic  antagonism  against 
his  father  was  not  productive  of  much  inconvenience 
to  himself.  His  arrest  was  soon  raised,  and  he  was 
restored  to  freedom,  though  not  to  favour  or  affec- 
tion. It  went  harder,  however,  with  his  friend  and 
confederate,  Count  Molcke,  against  whom,  as  nothing 
could  be  proved,  much  was  invented.  An  absurd 
story  was  coined  to  the  effect  that,  at  the  time  when 
Maximilian  was  opposing  his  father's  projects,  Count 
Molcke,  at  a  court  entertainment,  had  presented  his 
snuff-box  to  Ernest  Augustus.  That  illustrious  indi- 
vidual having  taken  therefrom  the  pungent  tribute 
respectfully  offered,  presented  the  same  to  an  Italian 
greyhound  which  lay  at  his  feet,  who  thereon  sud- 
denly sneezed,  and  swiftly  died.  The  count  was  sent 
into  close  arrest,  and  the  courtly  gossips  forged  the 
story  to  account  for  the  result.  The  unfortunate 
Molcke  was  indeed  as  severely  punished  as  though 
he  had  been  a  murderer  by  anticipation.  He  was 
judged  in  something  of  the  old  Jedburgh  fashion, 
whereby  execution  preceded  judgment ;  and  the  head 


90  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

of  Count  Molcke  had  fallen  before  men  could  well 
guess  why  he  had  forfeited  it.  The  fact  was  that 
this  penalty  had  been  exacted  as  a  vicarious  infliction 
on  Prince  Maximilian.  In  old-fashioned  courts  in 
England  there  used  to  be  a  whipping-boy  who 
received  castigation  whenever  the  young  princes  of 
the  royal  family  behaved  ill  The  latter,  in  the 
agony  of  the  actual  victim,  were  supposed  to  be  able 
to  understand  what  their  own  deserts  were,  and  what 
their  sufferings  would  have  been,  had  not  their  per- 
sons been  far  too  sacred  to  endure  chastisement  for 
their  faults.  The  more  ignoble  plotter  was  only 
banished,  and  in  the  death  of  a  friend,  and  the  exile 
of  a  follower,  Maximilian,  it  was  hoped,  would  see 
a  double  suggestion  from  which  he  would  draw  a 
healthy  conclusion.  This  course  had  its  desired 
effect.  The  disinherited  heir  accepted  his  ill-fortune 
with  a  humour  of  the  same  quality,  and,  openly  at 
least,  he  ceased  to  be  a  trouble  to  his  more  ambitious 
than  affectionate  father. 

Domestic  rebellion  having  been  thus  suppressed  or 
got  rid  of,  Ernest  Augustus  looked  to  the  emperor 
for  the  reward  of  his  ready  alacrity  in  supporting  the 
imperial  house.  It  was  not  without  much  trouble 
and  vexation  that  the  desired  end  was  achieved.  The 
sacred  college  opposed  the  aim  of  the  sovereign  of 
Hanover,  but  the  emperor,  of  his  own  accord,  made 
Ernest  Augustus  an  elector ;  and  the  iQth  December, 
1691,  was  the  joyful  day  of  nomination. 

The  day,  however,  was  anything  but  one  of  joy 
to  the  branch  of  Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.  That 
elder  branch  felt  itself  dishonoured  by  the  august 
dignity  which  had  been  conferred  upon  the  younger 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  91 

scion  of  the  family.  The  hatred  which  ensued 
between  the  kinsmen  was  of  that  intensity  which  is 
said  to  distinguish  the  mutual  hate  of  kinsmen  above 
all  others.  The  elder  branch,  and  the  sacred  college 
with  it,  affirmed  that  the  emperor  was  invested  with 
no  prerogative  by  which  he  could,  of  his  own  spon- 
taneous act,  add  a  ninth  elector  to  the  eight  already 
existing.  Originally  there  were  but  seven,  and  the 
accession  of  one  more  to  that  time-honoured  number 
was  pronounced  to  be  an  innovation  by  which  ill 
fortune  must  ensue.  Something  still  more  deplorable 
was  vaticinated  as  the  terrible  consequence  of  an 
illegal  step  so  peremptorily  taken  by  the  emperor, 
in  despite  of  the  other  electors. 

It  was  said  by  the  supporters  of  the  emperor  and 
Hanover  that  the  addition  of  a  ninth,  and  Protestant 
elector,  was  the  more  necessary ;  that  there  were 
only  two  electors  on  the  sacred  roll  who  now  fol- 
lowed the  faith  of  the  Reformed  Church ;  and  that 
the  sincerity  of  one,  at  least,  of  these  was  very  ques- 
tionable. The  reformed  states  of  Germany  had  a 
right  to  be  properly  represented,  and  the  emperor 
was  worthy  of  all  praise  for  respecting  this  right. 
With  regard  to  the  nomination,  it  was  stated  that, 
though  it  had  been  made  spontaneously  by  the 
emperor,  it  had  been  confirmed  by  the  Electoral 
College,  —  a  majority  of  the  number  of  which  had 
carried  the  election  of  the  emperor's  candidate. 

Now,  this  last  point  was  the  weak  point  of  the 
Hanoverians  ;  for  it  was  asserted  by  many  adver- 
saries, and  not  denied  by  many  supporters,  that  in 
such  a  case  as  this,  no  vote  of  the  Electoral  College 
was  good  unless  it  were  an  unanimous  vote.  To 


92  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

this  objection,  strongly  urged  by  the  elder  branch  of 
Brunswick-Wolfenbtittel,  no  answer  was  made,  except, 
indeed,  by  praising  the  new  elector,  of  whom  it  was 
correctly  stated  that  he  had  introduced  into  his 
states  such  a  taste  for  masquerades,  operas,  and 
ballets,  as  had  never  been  known  before ;  and  that 
he  had  made  a  merry  and  a  prosperous  people  of 
what  had  been  previously  but  a  dull  nation,  as  re- 
garded both  manners  and  commerce.  The  emperor 
only  thought  of  the  good  service  which  Ernest 
Augustus  had  rendered  him  in  the  field,  and  he  stood 
by  the  "accomplished  fact"  of  which  he  was  the 
chief  author. 

The  college  was  to  the  full  as  obstinate,  and 
would  not  recognise  any  vote  tendered  by  the  Elector 
of  Hanover,  or  of  Brunswick,  as  he  was  at  first 
called.  Ernest  Augustus  sat  in  the  college,  as  our 
Bishop  of  Sodor  and  Man  is  said  to  have  done,  in  the 
olden  time,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  where  a  seat  was 
prepared  for  the  prelate,  which  he  was  allowed  to 
occupy  on  condition  that  he  had  no  voice  in  the  pro- 
ceedings. For  nearly  sixteen  years  was  this  opposi- 
tion carried  on.  At  length,  on  the  3Oth  of  June, 
1708,  this  affair  of  the  ninth  electorate  was  adjusted, 
and  the  three  colleges  of  the  empire  resolved  to  admit 
the  Elector  of  Hanover  to  sit  and  vote  in  the  Electoral 
College.  In  the  same  month,  he  was  made  general 
of  the  imperial  troops,  then  assembled  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  Upper  Rhine. 

His  original  selection  by  the  emperor  had  much 
reference  to  his  military  services.  The  efforts  of 
Louis  XIV.  to  get  possession  of  the  Palatinate,  after 
the  death  of  the  Palatine  Louis,  had  caused  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  93 

formation  of  the  German  confederacy  to  resist  the 
aggression  of  France,  —  an  aggression  not  finally 
overcome  till  the  day  when  Marlborough  defeated 
Tallard  at  Blenheim.  Louis  was  hurried  into  the  war 
by  his  minister  Louvois,  who  was  annoyed  by  his 
interference  at  home  in  matters  connected  with  Lou- 
vois's  department.  It  was  to  make  the  confederation 
more  firm  and  united  that  Ernest  Augustus  was 
created,  rather  than  elected,  a  ninth  elector.  The 
three  Protestant  electors  were  those  of  Saxony,  Bran- 
denburg, and  Hanover ;  the  three  Catholic,  Bohemia, 
Bavaria,  and  the  Palatinate ;  and  the  three  spiritual 
electors,  the  Prince  Archbishops  of  Metz,  Treves,  and 
Cologne.  The  original  number  of  electors  was  seven, 
and  their  office,  according  to  Schiller,  was  to  encircle 
the  ruler  of  the  world  (the  emperor)  as  the  company 
of  stars  surround  the  sun  : 

"  Und  alle  die  Wahler,  die  Sieben 
Wie  der  Sterner  Chor  um  die  Sonne  sich  stellt, 
Umstanden  geschaftig  die  Herrscher  der  Welt, 
Der  Wiirde  des  Amtes  zu  iiben." 

In  the  battle-field  they  stood  with  their  colours 
round  the  imperial  standard,  "  like  Iris  with  all  her 
seven."  Their  efforts  against  France  were  not  at 
first  marked  by  success.  Marshal  Luxembourg 
routed  the  Dutch  General  Waldeck,  and  in  1691 
Namur  was  carried  by  storm,  and  Lidge  bombarded. 
In  the  following  year,  William  III.  was  defeated  at 
Steinkirk,  where  the  husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea 
served  under  him,  and  learned  how  great  a  general 
may  be  under  defeat,  —  for  never  was  retreat  con- 
ducted in  more  masterly  style.  The  castle  of  Heidel- 
berg, the  birthplace  of  the  Electress  Sophia,  was,  at 


94  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  same  period,  blown  into  ruins  by  the  French ; 
and  in  1697  the  Peace  of  Ryswick  humiliated  the 
allies,  and  gave  breathing  time  to  the  King  of  France 
to  frame  new  projects,  which  were  ultimately  foiled 
by  the  triumphant  sword  of  Marlborough.  But  this 
is  anticipating. 

The  history  of  the  creation  of  the  ninth  electorate 
would  not  be  complete,  without  citing  what  is  said  in 
respect  thereof  by  the  author  of  a  pamphlet  sup- 
pressed by  the  Hanoverian  government,  and  entitled 
"  Impeachment  of  the  Ministry  of  Count  Munster." 
It  is  to  this  effect :  "  During  the  war  between  Leo- 
pold I.  and  France,  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  Ernest  Augustus,  Duke  of  Brunswick,  and 
administrator  of  Osnaburgh,  father  of  George  I.,  had 
been  paid  a  considerable  sum  of  money  on  condition 
of  aiding  the  French  monarch  with  ten  thousand 
troops.  The  emperor,  aware  of  the  engagement, 
and  anxious  to  prevent  the  junction  of  these  forces 
with  the  enemy,  proposed  to  create  a  ninth  electorate, 
in  favour  of  the  duke,  provided  he  brought  his  levies 
to  the  imperial  banner.  The  degrading  offer  was 
accepted,  and  the  envoys  of  Brunswick-Lunebourg 
received  the  electoral  cap,  the  symbol  of  their 
master's  dishonour,  at  Vienna,  on  the  iQth  Decem- 
ber, 1692.  From  the  opposition  of  the  college  and 
princes,  Ernest  was  never  more  than  nominally  an 
elector,  and  even  his  son's  nomination  was  with  diffi- 
culty accomplished  in  1710.  It  was  in  connection 
with  this  new  dignity  that  Hanover,  a  name  till  then 
applied  only  to  a  principal  and  almost  independent 
city  of  the  dukedom  of  Brunswick,  became  known 
in  the  list  of  European  sovereignties." 


CHAPTER   VI. 

THE    KONIGSMARKS 

Count  Charles  John  Konigsmark's  Roving  and  Adventurous  Life 
—  The  Great  Heiress  —  An  Intriguing  Countess  —  "  Tom  of 
Ten  Thousand  "  —  The  Murder  of  Lord  John  Thynne  —  The 
Fate  of  the  Count's  Accomplices  —  Court  Influence  Shelters  the 
Guilty  Count. 

HAVING  briefly  traced  the  outline  of  the  history 
regarding  the  elevation  of  the  court  of  Hanover  to 
the  rank  of  an  electoral  court,  I  must  beg  permission 
for  a  short  space  more  to  be  episodical,  in  order  to 
trace  the  career  of  an  individual  whose  residence  at 
that  court  brought  death,  dishonour,  and  destruction 
in  his  train. 

The  circumstance  of  the  sojourn  of  a  Count 
Konigsmark  at  Zell,  during  the  childhood  of  Sophia 
Dorothea,  has  been  before  noticed.  Originally  the 
family  of  the  Konigsmarks  was  of  the  Mark  of  Bran- 
denburgh,  but  a  chief  of  the  family  settled  in  Sweden, 
and  the  name  carried  lustre  with  it  into  more  than 
one  country.  In  the  army,  the  cabinet,  and  the 
Church,  the  Konigsmarks  had  representatives  of 
whom  they  might  be  proud ;  and  generals,  states- 
men, and  prince-bishops,  all  labouring  with  glory  in 
their  respective  departments,  sustained  the  high 

95 


g6  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

reputation  of  this  once  celebrated  name.  From  the 
period,  early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  that  the 
first  Konigsmark  (Count  John  Christopher)  with- 
drew from  the  imperial  service  and  joined  that  of 
Sweden,  the  men  of  that  house  devoted  themselves, 
almost  exclusively,  to  the  profession  of  arms.  This 
Count  John  is  especially  famous  as  the  subduer  of 
Prague,  in  1648,  at  the  end  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War.  Of  all  the  costly  booty  which  he  carried  with 
him  from  that  city,  none  has  continued  to  be  so  well 
cared  for,  by  the  Swedes,  as  the  silver  book,  contain- 
ing the  Moeso-Gothic  Gospels  of  Bishop  Ulphilas, 
still  preserved  with  pride  at  learned  Upsal. 

John  Christopher  was  the  father  of  two  sons. 
Otho  William,  a  marshal  of  France,  a  valued  friend 
of  Charles  XII.,  and  a  gallant  servant  of  the  state 
of  Venice,  whose  government  honoured  his  tomb 
with  an  inscription,  Semper  Victori,  was  the  younger. 
He  was  pious  as  well  as  brave,  and  he  enriched  Ger- 
man literature  with  a  collection  of  very  fervid  and 
spiritual  hymns.  The  other,  and  the  older,  son  was 
Conrad  Christopher.  The  last  name  was  almost  as 
common  an  appellation  in  the  family  of  Konigsmark 
as  those  of  Timoleon  Cosse  in  the  family  of  Brissac. 
Conrad  Christopher  was  killed  in  the  year  1673, 
when  fighting  on  the  Dutch  and  imperial  side,  at 
the  siege  of  Bonn.  He  left  four  children,  three  of 
whom  became  at  once  famous  and  infamous.  His 
sons  were  Charles  John  and  Philip  Christopher.  His 
daughters  were  Maria  Aurora  (mother  of  the  famous 
Maurice  of  Saxony)  and  Amelia  Wilhelmina,  who 
was  fortunate  enough  to  achieve  happiness  without 
being  celebrated,  and  who,  if  she  has  not  been 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  97 

talked  of  beyond  her  own  Swedish  fireside,  passed 
there  a  life  of  as  calm  felicity  as  she  and  her  hus- 
band, Charles  von  Lowenhaupt,  could  enjoy  when 
they  had  relations  so  celebrated,  and  so  troublesome, 
as  Counts  Charles  John  and  Philip  Christopher,  and 
the  Countess  Maria  Aurora,  the  "favourite"  of  Au- 
gustus of  Poland,  and  the  only  royal  concubine,  per- 
haps, who  almost  deserved  as  much  respect  as  though 
she  had  won  her  greatness  by  a  legitimate  process. 

It  was  this  Philip  Christopher  who  was  for  a  brief 
season  the  playfellow  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  in  the 
young  days  of  both,  in  the  quiet  gardens  and  gal- 
leries of  Zell.  It  is  only  told  of  him  that,  after 
his  departure  from  Zell,  he  sojourned  with  various 
members  of  his  family,  travelled  with  them,  and 
returned  at  intervals  to  reside  with  his  mother,  Maria 
Christina,  of  the  German  family  of  Wrangle,  who 
unhappily  survived  long  enough  to  be  acquainted 
with  the  crimes  as  well  as  misfortunes  of  three  of 
her  children. 

In  the  year  1682,  Philip  Christopher  was  in  Eng- 
land. The  elder  brother,  who  had  more  than  once 
been  a  visitor  to  this  country,  and  a  welcome,  be- 
cause a  witty,  one  at  the  court  of  Charles  II.,  had 
brought  his  younger  brother  hither,  in  order  to  have 
him  instructed  more  completely  in  the  tenets  of  the 
Protestant  religion,  and  ultimately  to  place  him  at 
Oxford.  In  the  meantime  he  placed  him  in  a 
very  singular  locality  for  a  theological  student.  He 
lodged  him  with  a  "governor,"  at  the  riding-acad- 
emy, in  the  Haymarket,  of  that  Major  Foubert, 
whose  second  establishment  (where  he  taught  the 
young  to  witch  the  world  with  noble  horsemanship) 


98  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

is  still  commemorated  by  the  passage  out  of  Regent 
Street,  which  bears  the  name  of  the  French  Prot- 
estant refugee  and  professor  of  equestrianism. 

The  elder  brother  of  these  two  Konigsmarks  was 
a  superb  scoundrel,  and  I  have  no  more  faith  in  his 
professed  zeal  for  Philip  Christopher's  religion  than 
he  had  in  the  truth  which  Philip  was  to  be  taught, 
after  he  had  learned  to  ride.  He  had  led  a  roving 
and  adventurous  life,  and  was  in  England  when  not 
more  than  fifteen  years  of  age,  in  the  year  1674. 
During  the  next  half-dozen  years  he  had  rendered 
the  ladies  of  the  court  of  France  ecstatic  at  his 
impudence,  and  had  won  golden  opinions  from  the 
"  marine  knights "  of  Malta,  whom  he  had  accom- 
panied on  a  "  caravane,"  or  cruise,  against  the  Turks 
wherein  he  took  hard  blows  cheerfully,  and  had  well- 
nigh  been  drowned  by  his  impetuous  gallantry.  At 
some  of  the  courts  of  Southern  Europe,  he  appeared 
with  an  falat  which  made  the  men  hate  and  envy 
him  ;  but  nowhere  did  he  produce  more  effect  than 
at  Madrid,  where  he  appeared  at  the  period  of  the 
festivities  held  to  celebrate  the  marriage  of  Charles 
II.  with  Maria  Louisa  of  Orleans,  daughter  of  that 
Henrietta  Maria,  who  was  the  youngest  child  of  our 
Charles  I.,  born  at  Exeter,  never  beheld  by  her  sire, 
and  murdered,  it  is  feared,  by  the  connivance  of  her 
husband,  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  as  her  daughter,  this 
Maria  Louisa,  was  by  the  negligence  or  connivance 
of  her  consort. 

The  marriage  of  the  last  named  august  pair  was 
followed  by  the  fiercest  and  the  finest  bull-fights, 
symbolic  of  Spanish  royal  unions,  which  had  ever 
been  witnessed  in  Spain.  At  one  of  these,  Charles 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  99 

John  made  himself  the  champion  of  a  lady,  fought  in 
her  honour  in  the  arena  with  the  wildest  bull  of  the 
company,  and  got  dreadfully  mauled  for  his  pains. 
His  horse  was  slain,  and  he  himself,  staggering  and 
faint,  and  blind  with  loss  of  blood,  and  with  deep 
wounds,  had  finally  only  strength  enough  left  to  pass 
his  sword  into  the  neck  of  the  other  brute,  his  an- 
tagonist, and  to  be  carried  half-dead  and  quite  sense- 
less out  of  the  arena,  amid  the  fierce  approbation  of 
the  gentle  ladies,  who  purred  applause,  like  satisfied 
tigresses,  upon  the  unconscious  hero. 

In  1681,  at  the  mature  age  of  twenty-two,  master 
of  all  manly  vices,  and  ready  for  any  adventure,  he 
was  once  more  in  England,  where  he  seized  the 
opportunity  afforded  him  by  the  times  and  their 
events,  and  hastened  to  join  the  expedition  against 
Tangier.  He  behaved  like  a  young  hero,  and,  with 
his  appetite  for  sanguinary  adventure  whetted  by 
what  he  had  tasted,  on  the  conclusion  of  the  warm 
affair  at  Tangier,  he  went  as  an  amateur  against  the 
Algerines,  and  without  commission  inflicted  on  them 
and  their  "uncle"  (as  the  word  dey  implies)  as  much 
injury  as  though  he  had  been  chartered  general  at 
the  head  of  a  destroying  host.  When  he  returned 
to  England  at  the  conclusion  of  this  season  of  adven- 
ture, he  was  received,  amid  those  who  love  adventur- 
ers, with  a  peculiar  delight.  That  he  was  a  foreign 
adventurer,  then  as  now,  only  increased  his  attrac- 
tion ;  and,  from  the  king  downward,  "  polite  "  people, 
as  the  aristocracy  rudely  styled  itself  with  menda- 
cious exclusiveness,  received  Count  Charles  John  with 
enthusiasm.  His  handsome  face,  his  long  flaxen  hair, 
his  stupendous  periwig  for  state  occasions,  and  the 


ioo  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

boy's  ineffable  impudence,  made  him  the  delight  of 
the  impudent  people  of  those  impudent  times. 

Now,  of  all  those  people,  the  supercilious  Charles 
John  cared  but  for  one,  and  she,  there  is  reason  to 
believe,  knew  little  and  cared  less  for  this  presuming 
lad  of  the  house  of  Konigsmark. 

All  the  wisdom  and  science  of  John  Locke,  the 
physician  of  the  last  of  the  Percys,  could  not  save 
from  death,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  Joscelyn,  elev- 
enth Earl  of  Northumberland,  who  died  in  the  year 
1670,  the  last  of  the  male  line  of  his  house.  He 
left  an  only  daughter,  four  years  of  age,  named  Eliz- 
abeth. Her  father's  death  made  her  the  possessor 
—  awaiting  her  majority  —  of  vast  wealth,  to  which 
increase  was  made  by  succession  to  other  inherit- 
ances. Her  widowed  mother  married  Ralph  Mon- 
tague, English  ambassador  in  Paris,  builder  of  the 
"  Montague  "  houses,  which  occupied  successively  the 
site  of  the  present  British  Museum,  and  finally, 
husband,  after  the  death  of  the  widow  of  Percy,  of 
the  mad  Duchess  of  Albemarle,  who  declared  that 
she  would  never  wed  beneath  royalty,  and  whom 
he  wooed,  won,  and  maintained  as  "  Emperor  of 
China." 

When  the  widow  of  Joscelyn  espoused  Montague, 
her  daughter  Elizabeth  went  to  reside  with  the 
mother  of  Joscelyn,  —  Dowager  Countess  of  North- 
umberland, and  co-heiress  to  the  Suffolk  estate,  des- 
tined to  be  added  to  the  possessions  of  the  little 
Elizabeth.  She  was  an  intriguing,  indelicate,  self- 
willed,  and  worthless  old  woman  ;  and  with  respect 
to  the  poor  little  girl  of  whom  she  was  the  unworthy 
guardian,  she  "made  her  the  subject  of  constant 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  .  !  ,-3 


intrigues  with  men  of  power  who  wished  for  wealth, 
and  with  rich  men  who  wished  for  rank  and  power." 
Before  the  unhappy  little  heiress  had  attained  the 
age  of  thirteen,  her  grandmother  had  bound  her  in 
marriage  with  Henry  Cavendish,  Earl  Ogle.  Though 
the  ceremony  was  performed,  the  parties  did  not,  of 
course,  reside  together.  The  dowager  countess  and 
the  earl  were  satisfied  that  the  fortune  of  the  heiress 
was  secured,  and  they  were  further  content  to  wait 
for  what  might  follow. 

That  which  followed  was  what  they  least  expected, 
—  death  ;  the  bridegroom  died  within  a  year  of  his 
union  with  Elizabeth  Percy  ;  and  this  child,  wife,  and 
widow  was  again  at  the  disposal  of  her  wretched 
grandmother.  The  heiress  of  countless  thousands 
was  anything  but  the  mistress  of  herself. 

At  this  period  the  proprietor  of  the  house  and 
domain  of  Longleat,  in  Wiltshire,  was  that  Thomas 
Thynne,  whom  Dryden  has  celebrated  as  the  Issa- 
char  of  his  "  Absalom  and  Achitophel,"  who  was  the 
friend  of  the  Duke  of  Monmouth,  was  alliteratively 
spoken  of  as  "  Tom  of  Ten  Thousand,"  and  who  was 
a  very  unworthy  fellow,  although  the  member  of  a 
most  worthy  house.  Tom's  Ten  Thousand  virtues 
were  of  that  metal  which  the  Dowager  Countess 
of  Northumberland  most  approved  ;  and  her  grand- 
daughter had  not  been  many  months  the  widow  of 
Lord  Ogle,  when  her  precious  guardian  united  her 
by  private  marriage  to  Thynne.  The  newly  married 
couple  were  at  once  separated.  The  marriage  was 
the  result  of  an  infamous  intrigue  between  infamous 
people,  some  of  whom,  subsequently  to  Thynne's 
death,  sued  his  executors  for  money  which  he  had 


i  oi  LiVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

bound  himself  to  pay  for  services  rendered  to  further 
the  marriage. 

When  Charles  John  Konigsmark  arrived  in  Eng- 
land, in  January,  1682,  all  England  was  talking  of  the 
match  wherein  a  poor  child  had  been  sold,  although 
the  purchaser  had  not  yet  possession  of  either  his 
victim  or  her  fortune.  The  common  talk  must  have 
had  deep  influence  on  the  count,  who  appears  to  have 
been  impressed  with  the  idea  that  if  Thynne  were 
dead,  Count  Charles  John  Konigsmark  might  suc- 
ceed to  his  place  and  expectations. 

On  the  evening  of  Sunday,  the  I2th  of  February, 
1682,  Thynne  was  in  his  coach,  from  which  the  Duke 
of  Monmouth  had  only  just  previously  alighted,  and 
was  riding  along  that  part  of  Pall  Mall  which  abuts 
upon  Cockspur  Street,  when  the  carriage  was  stopped 
by  three  men  on  horseback,  one  of  whom  discharged 
a  carbine  into  it,  whereby  Tom  of  Ten  Thousand  was 
so  desperately  wounded  that  he  died  in  a  few  hours. 

The  persons  charged  with  this  murder  were  chiefly 
discovered  by  means  of  individuals  of  ill  repute  with 
whom  they  associated.  By  such  means  were  arrested 
a  German,  Captain  Vratz,  Borosky,  a  Pole,  and  a  fel- 
low, half  knave,  half  enthusiast,  described  as  Lieu- 
tenant Stern.  Vratz  had  accompanied  Konigsmark 
to  England.  They  lodged  together,  first  in  the  Hay- 
market,  next  in  Rupert  Street,  and  finally  in  St. 
Martin's  Lane.  Borosky  had  been  clothed  and  armed 
at  the  count's  expense ;  and  Stern  was  employed  as 
a  likely  tool  to  help  them  in  this  enterprise.  It  was 
proved  on  the  trial  that,  after  the  deed  was  committed, 
these  men  were  at  the  count's  lodgings,  that  a  sud- 
den separation  took  place,  and  that  the  count  himself, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  103 

upon  some  sudden  fear,  took  flight  to  the  waterside ; 
there  he  lay  hid  for  awhile,  and  then  dodged  about 
the  river,  in  various  disguises,  in  order  to  elude  pur- 
suit, until  he  finally  landed  at  Gravesend,  where  he 
was  pounced  upon  by  two  most  expert  thief -catchers, 
—  cunning  as  Vidocq,  determined  as  Townsend,  and 
farsighted  as  Field. 

The  confession  of  the  instruments,  save  Vratz, 
did  not  affect  the  count.  His  defence  took  a  high 
Protestant  turn,  —  made  allusion  to  his  Protestant 
ancestors,  and  their  deeds  in  behalf  of  Protestantism, 
lauded  Protestant  England,  alluded  to  his  younger 
brother,  brought  expressly  here  to  be  educated  in 
Protestant  principles,  and  altogether  was  exceedingly 
clever,  but  in  no  wise  convincing.  It  was  a  defence 
likely  to  do  him  good  with  a  jury  and  people  in  mor- 
tal fear  of  popery,  possessed  by  deadly  hatred  of  a 
possible  popish  successor  to  the  throne,  and  influenced 
by  foolish  affection  for  the  Duke  of  Monmouth,  who, 
being  of  no  religion  at  all,  was  consequently  no  "  pa- 
pist," and  might  hereafter  become  a  good  Protestant 
king,  —  just  as  his  graceless  father  had  been.  It 
was,  moreover,  known  that  the  king  would  learn  with 
pleasure  that  the  count  had  been  acquitted ;  and  as 
this  knowledge  was  possessed  by  judges  who  were 
removable  at  the  king's  pleasure,  it  had  a  very  strong 
influence ;  and  the  arch-murderer,  the  most  cowardly 
of  the  infamous  company,  was  acquitted  accordingly. 
In  his  case,  the  verdict,  as  regarded  him,  was  given 
in  last.  The  other  three  persons  were  indicted  for 
the  actual  commission  of  the  fact,  Konigsmark  as 
accessory  before  the  fact,  hiring  them,  and  instigat- 
ing them  to  the  crime.  Thrice  he  had  heard  the 


104  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

word  "  guilty  "  pronounced,  and,  despite  his  reckless- 
ness, was  somewhat  moved  when  the  jury  were  asked 
as  to  their  verdict  respecting  him.  "  Not  guilty," 
murmured  the  foreman  ;  and  then  the  noble  count, 
mindful  only  of  himself,  and  forgetful  of  the  three 
unhappy  men  whom  he  had  dragged  to  death,  ex- 
claimed in  his  unmanly  joy,  "God  bless  the  king, 
and  this  honourable  bench  !  "  He  well  knew  where 
his  gratitude  was  due  —  to  a  graceless  monarch,  and 
a  servile  judge.  The  meaner  assassins  were  flung  to 
the  gallows.  Vratz  went  to  his  fate,  like  Pierre ; 
declared  that  the  murder  was  the  result  of  a  mistake, 
that  he  had  no  hand  in  it,  and  that  as  he  was  a  gen- 
tleman, God  would  assuredly  deal  with  him  as  such  ! 

This  "gentleman,"  who  looked  for  civil  treatment 
hereafter,  accounted  for  his  presence  at  the  murder 
as  having  arisen  by  his  entertaining  a  quarrel  with 
Mr.  Thynne,  whom  he  was  about  to  challenge,  when 
the  Pole,  mistaking  his  orders  and  inclinations,  dis- 
charged his  carbine  into  the  carriage,  and  slew  the 
occupant.  The  other  two  confessed  to  the  murder, 
as  the  hired  instruments  of  Vratz ;  but  the  latter 
(who  could  not  have  saved  his  own  neck  by  implicat- 
ing the  count,  his  employer)  kept  his  own  secret  as 
to  him  who  had  seduced  him  to  this  great  sin,  and, 
feeling  that  he  was  thus  behaving  as  a  "  gentleman  " 
of  those  days  was  expected  to  behave,  quietly  con- 
fided in  the  hope  that  he  would  be  treated  hereafter 
in  gentlemanlike  fashion,  in  return. 

Count  Philip  Christopher  gave  brief  evidence  on 
this  trial,  simply  to  speak  to  his  brother's  having 
been  engaged  in  the  purchase  of  horses.  As  for 
Count  Charles  John,  he  felt  for  a  moment  that  there 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  105 

was  a  blot  or  speck  upon  the  escutcheon  of  the 
Konigsmarks.  "  Tut !  "  said  he,  after  a  little  reflec- 
tion :  "  it  will  all  be  wiped  out  by  some  dazzling 
action  in  war,  or  a  lodging  on  a  counterscarp ! "  So 
did  this  Protestant  gentleman  settle  with  his  con- 
science. He  proceeded  to  efface  the  little  speck  in 
question  by  repairing  to  the  court  of  France,  where 
he  was  received  in  that  sort  of  gentlemanly  fashion 
which  Vratz  looked  for  in  Paradise. 

His  sword  gleamed  in  many  an  action  fought  in 
various  battle-fields  of  Europe  during  the  next  few 
years,  in  most  of  which  he  distinguished  himself  at 
the  head  of  a  French  regiment,  of  which  he  was 
colonel.  Finally,  in  1686,  he  was  in  the  service  of 
the  Venetians  in  the  Morea.  On  the  29th  of  August 
he  was  before  Argos,  when  a  sortie  was  made  by  the 
garrison,  and  in  the  bloody  struggle  which  ensued 
he  was  mortally  wounded.  He  had  done  enough, 
he  thought,  to  wipe  out  the  speck  which  had  for  a 
season  sullied  the  good  name  of  Konigsmark  ;  and  he 
was  grateful  to  the  last  for  the  kind  attentions  paid 
to  him  by  the  "polite"  society  of  England  during 
the  time  of  his  little  troubles.  In  short,  this  so-called 
Protestant  gentleman,  who  was  a  popish  colonel  in 
the  service  of  Louis  XIV.,  did  not  appear  to  have 
the  remotest  idea  of  the  balance  likely  to  be  struck 
against  him  by  the  recording  angel.  Like  Vratz, 
perhaps,  he  considered  that  he  was  too  much  of  a 
"  gentleman  "  to  have  his  little  foibles  set  down  against 
him  in  heaven's  chancery. 

They  were  not  even  recorded  against  him  on 
Thynne's  tomb  in  Westminster  Abbey.  A  Latin 
inscription  was  prepared  for  the  tomb,  which  more 


io6  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

than  merely  hinted  that  Konigsmark  was  the  mur- 
derer of  Tom  of  Ten  Thousand.  "Small,  servile 
Spratt,"  then  Dean  of  Westminster,  would  not,  how- 
ever, allow  the  inscription  to  be  set  up :  and  his 
apologists,  who  advance  in  his  behalf  that  he  would 
have  done  wrong  had  he  allowed  a  man,  cleared  by 
a  jury  from  the  charge  of  murder,  to  be  permanently 
set  down  in  hard  record  of  marble  as  an  assassin, 
have  much  reason  in  what  they  advance. 

Before  we  trace  the  further  outlines  of  the  Konigs- 
mark annals,  it  were  as  well  briefly  to  state  what 
became  of  the  youthful  maid,  wife,  and  widow,  Lady 
Ogle.  She  remained  at  Amsterdam  (whither  she  had 
gone,  some  persons  said  fled),  after  her  marriage  with 
Thynne,  until  the  three  of  his  murderers,  who  had 
been  executed,  had  expiated  their  crime,  as  far  as 
human  justice  was  concerned,  upon  the  scaffold.  If 
her  ladyship  landed  at  Harwich,  the  most  frequented 
port  in  those  days  for  travellers  arriving  from  or  pro- 
ceeding to  Holland,  she  probably  passed  the  body  of 
one  of  the  assassins,  Stern,  as  she  entered  London 
by  Mile  End.  However  this  may  be,  the  young  lady 
did  not  "appear  public,"  as  the  phrase  went,  for  six 
or  seven  weeks,  and  when  she  did  so,  it  was  found 
that  she  had  just  married  Charles  Seymour,  third 
Duke  of  Somerset  —  a  match  which  made  one  of 
two  silly  persons  and  a  couple  of  colossal  fortunes. 

This  red-haired  lady  met  with  rude  ingratitude 
from  the  duke,  and  was  designated  by  Swift  as  "  your 
d — d  Duchess  of  Somerset."  He  had  reason  to  be 
angry,  for  when  she  was  mistress  of  the  robes  to 
Queen  Anne,  she  contrived  to  prevent  his  being 
raised  to  a  bishopric ;  by  which  she  did  extremely 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  107 

good  service.  She  was  the  mother  of  a  numerous 
family,  and  her  third  son  married  a  granddaughter  of 
the  first  Viscount  Weymouth,  —  the  cousin  and  heir 
of  Tom  of  Ten  Thousand.  She  died  in  the  fifty-sixth 
year  of  her  age,  A.  D.  1722  ;  and  the  duke,  then  sixty- 
four,  found  speedy  consolation  for  his  loss  in  a  mar- 
riage with  the  youthful  Lady  Charlotte  Finch,  who 
was  at  once  his  wife,  nurse,  and  secretary.  A  very 
few  persons  of  extreme  old  age  are  alive  who  saw  her 
in  their  childhood,  when  she  died,  in  the  year  1773. 
It  is  said  of  her  that  she  one  day,  in  the  course  of 
conversation,  tapped  her  husband  familiarly  on  the 
shoulder  with  her  fan ;  whereupon  that  amiable  gen- 
tleman indignantly  cried  out :  "  Madam,  my  first  wife 
was  a  Percy ;  and  she  never  took  such  a  liberty  ! " 

But  it  is  time  to  revert  to  the  Konigsmark  whose 
fate  was  so  bound  up  with  that  of  Sophia  Dorothea. 
He  left  England  with  his  brother,  and  did  not  pursue 
his  researches  after  Protestantism  at  the  feet  of  any 
reformed  Gamaliel  on  the  Continent.  Like  his  brother, 
he  led  an  adventurous  and  roving  life,  never  betraying 
any  symptom  of  the  Christian  spirit  of  the  religion  of 
the  Church  of  England,  of  which  he  first  tasted  what 
little  could  be  found  in  Major  Foubert's  riding-school. 
A  portion  of  his  time  was  spent  at  Hamburg  with  his 
mother  and  two  sisters.  His  renown  was  sufficient 
for  a  cavalier  who  loved  to  live  splendidly ;  and 
when  he  appeared  at  the  court  of  Hanover,  he  was 
welcomed  as  cavaliers  are  who  are  so  comfortably 
endowed. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

KONIGSMARK    AT    COURT 

Various  Accomplishments  of  Count  Philip  Christopher  Konigsmark 
—  The  Early  Companion  of  Sophia  Dorothea  —  Her  Friendship 
for  Him  —  An  Interesting  Interview  —  Intrigues  of  Madame  von 
Platen  —  Foiled  in  Her  Machinations  —  A  Dramatic  Incident  — 
The  Unlucky  Glove  —  Scandal  against  the  Honour  of  the  Prin- 
cess—  A  Mistress  Enraged  on  Discovery  of  Her  Using  Rouge  — 
Indiscretion  of  the  Princess  —  Her  Visit  to  Zell  —  The  Elector's 
Criminal  Intimacy  with  Madame  von  Schulemberg  —  William  the 
Norman's  Brutality  to  His  Wife  —  The  Elder  Aymon  —  Brutality 
of  the  Austrian  Empress  to  "  Madame  Royale "  —  Return  of 
Sophia,  and  Reception  by  Her  Husband. 

THE  estimation  in  which  Count  Philip  Christopher 
von  Konigsmark  was  held  at  the  court  of  Hanover 
was  soon  manifested,  by  his  elevation  to  the  post  of 
colonel  of  the  guards.  He  was  the  handsomest  colo- 
nel in  the  small  electoral  army,  and  passed  for  the 
richest.  His  way  of  life  was  warrant  for  the  opinion 
entertained  of  his  wealth,  but  more  flimsy  warrant 
could  hardly  have  existed,  for  the  depth  of  a  purse  is 
not  to  be  discovered  by  the  manner  of  life  of  him 
who  owns  it.  He  continued  withal  to  enchant  every 
one  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  The  spendthrifts 
reverenced  him,  for  he  was  royally  extravagant ;  the 
few  people  of  taste  spoke  of  him  encouragingly,  for 
at  an  era  when  little  taste  was  shown,  he  exhibited 
much  both  in  his  dress  and  his  equipages.  These 

1 08 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  109 

were  splendid  without  being  gaudy.  The  scholars 
even  could  speak  with  and  of  him  without  a  sneer 
expressed  or  reserved,  for  Philip  Christopher  was 
intellectually  endowed,  had  read  more  than  most  of 
the  mere  cavaliers  of  his  day,  and  had  a  good  memory, 
with  an  understanding  whose  digestive  powers  a 
philosopher  might  have  envied.  He  was  not  less 
welcome  to  the  soldier  than  the  scholar,  for  he  had 
had  experience  in  "  the  tented  field,"  and  had  earned 
in  the  "  imminently  deadly  breach  "  much  reputation, 
without  having  been  himself,  in  the  slightest  degree, 
"illustriously  maimed."  Ballrooms  reechoed  with  the 
ringing  eulogiums  of  his  gracefulness,  and  his  witty 
sayings  are  reported  as  having  been  in  general  cir- 
culation; but  they  have  not  been  strong  enough  to 
travel  by  the  rough  paths  of  time  down  to  these  later 
days.  He  is  praised,  too,  as  having  been  satirical, 
without  any  samples  of  his  satire  having  been  offered 
for  our  opinion.  He  was  daringly  irreligious,  for 
which  freethinkers  applauded  him  as  a  man  of  liberal 
sentiments,  believing  little,  and  fearing  less.  He  was 
preeminently  gay,  which,  in  modern  and  honest  Eng- 
lish, means  that  he  was  terribly  licentious  ;  and  such 
was  the  temper  of  the  times,  that  probably  he  was  as 
popular  for  this  characteristic  as  for  all  the  other 
qualities  by  which  he  was  distinguished,  put  together. 
Those  times  must  be  more  than  ordinarily  out  of  joint, 
when  a  man  is  more  estimably  accounted  of  for  his 
great  sins  than  for  his  sterling  virtues. 

There  was  nothing  remarkable  in  the  fact  that  he 
speedily  attracted  the  notice  of  Sophia  Dorothea. 
She  may,  without  fault,  have  remembered  with  pleas- 
ure the  companion  of  her  youth  ;  may  have  "  wished 


no  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

him  well  and  no  harm  done,"  as  Pierre  says.  He 
was  not  a  mere  stranger;  and  the  two  met,  just  as 
the  husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea  had  publicly  insulted 
her  by  ostentatiously  parading  his  attachment  and  his 
bad  taste  for  women,  no  more  to  be  compared  with 
her  in  worth  and  virtue  than  Lais  with  Lucretia. 

What  follows  much  more  nearly  resembles  romance 
than  history,  but  it  is  without  doubt  substantially  true, 
and  in  the  details  of  the  catastrophe  wholly  so.  It 
is  asserted,  that  the  count  had  scarcely  been  made 
colonel  of  the  guards  when  the  Countess  von  Platen 
fixed  upon  him  as  the  instrument  by  which  she  would 
ruin  Sophia  Dorothea,  and  relieve  George  Louis  of  a 
wife  whose  virtues  were  a  continual  reproach  to  him. 
The  simplest  and  most  innocent  of  circumstances  ap- 
peared here  the  basis  whereon  to  lay  the  first  stone 
of  her  edifice  of  infamy. 

The  princess  had  been  taking  some  exercise  in  the 
gardens  of  the  palace,  returning  from  which  she  met 
her  little  son,  George  Augustus,  whom  she  took  from 
the  arms  of  his  attendant,  and  with  him  in  her  arms 
began  to  ascend  the  stairs  which  led  to  her  apart- 
ments. Her  good-will  was  greater  than  her  strength, 
and  Count  Konigsmark  happened  to  see  her  at  the 
moment  when  she  was  exhibiting  symptoms  of  weak- 
ness and  irresolution,  embarrassed  by  her  burthen, 
and  not  knowing  how  to  proceed  with  it.  The  count 
at  once,  with  ready  gallantry,  not  merely  proffered, 
but  gave  his  aid.  He  took  the  young  prince  from  his 
mother,  ascended  the  stairs,  holding  the  future  King 
of  England  in  his  arms,  and  at  the  door  of  the  apart- 
ment of  Sophia  Dorothea  again  consigned  him  to 
maternal  keeping.  They  tarried  for  a  few  brief 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  in 

i 
moments  at  the  door,  exchanging  a  few  conventional 

terms  of  thanks  and  civility,  when  they  were  seen  by 
the  ubiquitous  Von  Platen,  and  out  of  this  simple  fact 
she  gradually  worked  the  subsequent  terrible  calamity 
which  may  be  said  to  have  slain  both  victims,  for 
Sophia  Dorothea  was  only  for  years  slowly  accom- 
plishing death,  which  fell  upon  the  cavalier  so  surely 
and  so  swiftly. 

This  incident  was  reported  to  Ernest  Augustus 
with  much  exaggeration  of  detail,  and  liberal  sugges- 
tion not  warranted  by  the  facts.  The  conduct  of  the 
princess  was  mildly  censured  as  indiscretion,  that  of 
the  count  as  disloyal  impertinence ;  and,  thereto, 
a  mountain  of  comment  seems  to  have  been  added, 
and  a  misty  world  of  hints,  which  annoyed  the  duke 
without  convincing  him.  If  he  had  a  conviction,  it 
was  that  Von  Platen  was  herself  more  zealous  than 
discreet,  and  less  discerning  than  either. 

Foiled  in  her  first  attempt  to  ruin  Sophia  Doro- 
thea, she  addressed  herself  to  the  task  of  cementing 
strict  friendship  with  the  count ;  and  he,  a  gallant 
cavalier,  was  nothing  loath,  nought  suspecting.  Of 
the  terms  of  this  friendly  alliance  little  is  known. 
They  were  only  to  be  judged  of  by  the  conduct  of  the 
parties  whom  that  alliance  bound.  A  perfect  under- 
standing appeared  to  have  been  established  between 
them  ;  and  the  Countess  von  Platen  was  often  heard 
to  rally  the  count  upon  the  love-passages  in  his  life,  and 
even  upon  his  alleged  well-known  admiration  of  Sophia 
Dorothea.  What  was  said  jokingly,  or  was  intended 
to  seem  as  if  said  jokingly,  was  soon  accepted  by  cas- 
ual hearers  as  a  sober,  and  a  sad  as  sober,  truth. 

This  first  step  having  been   made,   no  time  was 


112  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

lost  in  pursuing  the  object  for  which  it  had  been 
accomplished.  At  one  of  those  splendid  masquerades, 
in  which  Ernest  Augustus  especially  delighted,  which 
he  managed  with  consummate  taste,  and  for  which 
he  gained  as  much  reputation  among  the  gay,  as  he 
had  deservedly  won  for  deeds  of  battle,  from  the 
brave,  —  at  one  of  these  gorgeous  entertainments, 
given  about  the  time  of  the  duke's  elevation  to  the 
electorate,  Konigsmark  distinguished  himself  above 
all  the  other  guests  by  the  variety,  as  well  as  richness, 
of  his  costume,  and  by  the  sparkling  talent  with  which 
he  supported  each  assumed  character.  He  excited  a 
universal  admiration,  and  in  none,  —  so  it  was  said 
by  the  Countess  von  Platen,  —  in  none  more  than  in 
Sophia  Dorothea.  This  may  have  been  true,  and 
the  poor  princess  may  possibly  have  found  some 
oblivion  for  her  domestic  trials  in  allowing  herself  to 
be  amused  with  the  exercise  of  the  count's  dramatic 
talent.  She  honestly  complimented  him  on  his  ability, 
and  on  the  advantages  which  the  fete  derived  from 
his  presence,  his  talent,  and  his  good-nature.  Out 
of  this  compliment,  the  countess  forged  another  link 
of  the  chain,  whereby  she  intended  to  bind  the  prin- 
cess to  a  ruin  from  which  she  should  not  escape. 

The  next  incident  told  is  more  dramatic  of  char- 
acter, perhaps,  than  any  of  the  others.  The  countess 
had  engaged  the  count  in  conversation  in  a  pavilion 
of  the  gardens  in  the  electoral  palace,  when,  making 
the  approach  of  two  gentlemen  an  excuse  for  retiring, 
they  withdrew  together.  The  gentlemen  alluded  to 
were  George  Louis  and  the  Count  von  Platen ;  and 
these  entering  the  pavilion  which  had  just  been 
vacated,  the  former  picked  up  a  glove  which  had 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  113 

been  dropped  by  the  countess.  The  prince  recognised 
it  by  the  embroidery,  and  perhaps  by  a  crest,  or  some 
mark  impressed  upon  it,  as  being  a  glove  belonging 
to  his  consort.  He  was  musingly  examining  it,  when 
a  servant  entered  the  place,  professedly  in  search 
of  a  glove  which  the  princess  had  lost.  On  some 
explanation  ensuing,  it  was  subsequently  discovered 
that  Madame  Wreyke,  the  sister  of  the  Countess 
von  Platen,  had  succeeded  in  persuading  Prince 
Maximilian  to  procure  for  her  this  glove,  on  pretext 
that  she  wished  to  copy  the  pattern  of  the  embroidery 
upon  it,  and  that  the  prince  had  thoughtlessly  done 
so,  leaving  the  glove  of  Madame  Wreyke  in  its  place. 
But  this,  which  might  have  accounted  for  its  appear- 
ance in  the  pavilion,  was  not  known  to  George  Louis, 
who  would  probably  in  such  case  have  ceased  to 
think  more  of  the  matter,  but  that  he  was  obligingly 
informed  that  Count  Konigsmark  had  been  before 
him  in  the  pavilion  where  the  glove  was  found, — 
been  there,  indeed,  with  the  excellent  Countess  von 
Platen,  who  acknowledged  the  fact,  adding,  that  no 
glove  was  on  the  ground  when  she  was  there,  and 
that  the  one  found  could  not  have  been  hers,  inas- 
much as  she  never  wore  Netherland  gloves,  as  the 
one  in  question  was,  but  gloves  altogether  of  different 
make  and  quality.  Konigsmark  had  been  there,  and 
the  glove  of  the  Princess  Sophia  Dorothea  had  been 
found  there,  and  this  excellent  German  specimen  of 
Mrs.  Candour  knew  nothing  beyond. 

This  unlucky  glove  really  effected  as  much  per- 
plexity, pain,  and  calamity  as  the  handkerchief  in 
"  Othello."  Thenceforth,  George  Louis  was  not 
merely  rude  and  faithless  to  his  wife,  but  cruel  in 


H4  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  extreme  —  the  degrading  blow,  so  it  was  alleged, 
following  the  harsh  word.  The  Elector  of  Hanover 
was  more  just  than  his  rash  and  worthless  son :  he 
disbelieved  the  insinuations  made  against  his  daughter- 
in-law,  and  was  probably  disgusted  with  the  domestic 
trouble  with  which  his  electorship  had  been  inaugura- 
ted. The_electress  was  less  reasonable,  less  merciful, 
less  just,  to  her  son's  wife.  She  treated  her  with  a 
coolness  which  interpreted  a  belief  in  the  slander 
uttered  against  her ;  and  when  Sophia  Dorothea 
expressed  a  wish  to  visit  her  mother,  the  electoral 
permission  was  given  with  an  alacrity  which  testified 
to  the  pleasure  with  which  the  Electress  of  Hanover 
would  witness  the  departure  of  Sophia  Dorothea  from 
her  court. 

Granting  that  the  incidents  were  all  as  here  related, 
the  persons  who  were  affected  by  them  as  damning 
evidence  against  the  wife  of  "the  electoral  prince," 
as  George  Louis  was  now  called,  must  have  been 
singularly  void  of  penetration,  or  even  of  common 
discernment.  But  some  of  them,  if  they  lacked 
clearness  of  judgment,  did  not  want  for  wickedness ; 
and,  in  truth,  it  may  be  rather  said,  that  their  pene- 
tration was  not  at  fault,  but  that  their  wickedness 
would  not  permit  of  its  being  exercised. 

Sophia  Dorothea  had  experience  of  this  as  soon  as 
she  descended  at  the  gates  of  her  father's  residence. 
She  found  a  mother  there,  indeed,  ready  to  receive 
her  with  the  arms  of  a  mother's  love,  and  to  feel 
that  the  love  was  showered  upon  a  daughter  worthy 
of  it.  Not  of  like  quality  were  the  old  duke's  feelings. 
Communications  had  been  made  to  him  from  Hanover, 
to  the  effect  that  his  daughter  was  obstinate,  dis- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  115 

obedient,  disrespectful  to  the  elector  and  electress, 
neglectful  of  her  children,  and  faithless  in  heart,  if 
not  in  fact,  to  their  father.  The  Duke  of  Zell  had 
been,  as  he  thought,  slow  to  believe  the  charges 
brought  against  his  child's  good  name,  and  had 
applied  to  the  elector  for  some  further  explanation. 
But  poor  Ernest  Augustus  was  just  then  perplexed 
by  another  domestic  quarrel.  His  son,  the  ever 
troublesome  Prince  Maximilian,  having  long  enter- 
tained a  suspicion  that  the  Countess  von  Platen's 
denial  of  the  light  offence  laid  to  her  charge,  of 
wearing  rouge,  was  also  a  playful  denial,  mischievously 
proved  the  fact  one  day,  by  not  very  gallantly  "  flick- 
ing" (a  good  German  word,  as  explaining  the  con- 
sequence of  what  he  did)  from  his  finger  a  little 
water  in  which  peas  had  been  boiled,  and  which  was 
then  a  popularly  mischievous  test  to  try  the  presence 
of  rouge,  as,  if  the  latter  were  there,  the  pea-water 
left  an  indelible  fleck  or  stain  upon  it.  At  this 
indignity,  the  Countess  von  Platen  was  the  more 
enraged,  as  her  denial  had  been  disproved.  She 
rushed  to  the  feet  of  the  elector,  and  told  her  com- 
plaint with  an  energy  as  if  the  whole  state  were  in 
peril.  The  elector  listened,  threatened  Prince  Max- 
imilian with  arrest,  and  wished  his  family  were  as 
easy  to  govern  as  his  electoral  dominions.  He  had 
scarcely  relieved  himself  of  this  particular  source  of 
trouble,  by  binding  Prince  Maximilian  to  his  good 
behaviour,  when  he  was  applied  to  by  the  Duke  of 
Zell  on  the  subject  of  his  daughter.  He  angrily 
referred  the  duke  to  three  of  his  ministers,  who,  he 
said,  were  acquainted  with  the  facts.  Now  these  min- 
isters were  the  men  who  had  expressly  distorted  them. 


n6  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

These  worthy  persons,  if  report  may  be  trusted, 
performed  their  wicked  office,  with  as  wicked  an 
alacrity.  However  the  result  was  reached,  its  exist- 
ence cannot  be  denied,  and  its  consequences  were 
fatal  to  Sophia  Dorothea.  The  Electress  Sophia  is 
said  to  have  so  thoroughly  hated  her  daughter-in-law 
as  to  have  entered  partly  into  these  misrepresentations, 
which  acquired  for  her  the  temporary  wrath  of  her 
father.  But  of  this  enmity  of  her  mothers-in-law,  the 
younger  Sophia  does  not  appear  to  have  suspected 
anything.  She  possessed  not  those  means  of  dis- 
covering the  treachery  of  such  a  relative,  which, 
according  to  Plutarch,  were  to  be  procured  by  the 
nations  of  old.  The  icy-cold  plant  called  the  Phryxa, 
which  grew  on  the  banks  of  the  Tanais,  was  popularly 
said  to  be  the  guardian  angel  of  those  who  feared 
the  machinations  of  step-dames  and  mothers-in-law. 
If  one  of  the  latter  were  plotting  against  the  peace 
of  her  kindred  by  marriage,  the  plant  set  itself  on 
fire  and  shot  forth  a  bright  flame  upon  being  looked 
at  by  the  intended  victim.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
name  of  a  step-dame  or  mother-in-law  breathed  over 
the  white  violet  which  grew  on  the  banks  of  the 
river  Lycormas,  caused  the  flower  instantly  to  wither 
away,  —  such  antipathy  did  it  bear  to  the  persons 
holding  in  families  the  rank  and  position  above 
named. 

Sophia  Dorothea  had  no  means  of  applying  the 
first  test,  nor  would  she,  even  if  the  application  had 
resulted  in  the  discovery  of  her  mother-in-law's  treach- 
ery, have  had  recourse,  could  she  have  done  so,  to 
the  test.  She  was  too  gentle  of  nature,  and  she  bore 
her  father's  temporary  aversion  with  a  wondering 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  117 

patience,  satisfied  that  "time  and  the  hour"  would 
at  length  do  her  justice. 

The  duke's  prejudice,  however,  was  rather  stub- 
born of  character,  and  he  was  guilty  of  many  ab- 
surdities to  show,  as  he  thought,  that  his  obstinacy 
of  ill-merited  feeling  against  his  own  child  was  not 
ill-founded.  He  refused  to  listen  to  her  own  state- 
ment of  her  wrongs,  in  order  to  show  how  he  guarded 
himself  against  being  unduly  biassed :  a  proceeding 
which  as  much  ran  counter  against  profession,  as 
that  of  the  old  clergy  of  the  Established  Church  of 
Scotland,  who  had  a  horror  of  theatrical  entertain- 
ments, but  who,  nevertheless,  made  a  point  of  going 
to  the  play  in  Lent,  that  they  might  manifest  their 
contempt  for  what  they  considered  a  remnant  of 
popery ! 

The  mother  of  the  princess  remained,  however, 
and  naturally  so,  her  firmest  friend  and  truest  cham- 
pion. If  misrepresentations  had  shaken  her  confi- 
dence for  a  moment,  it  was  only  for  a  moment.  She 
knew  the  disposition  of  Sophia  Dorothea  too  well  to 
lend  credit  to  false  representations  which  depicted 
her  as  a  wife,  compared  with  whom  Petruchio's 
Katherine  would  have  been  the  gentlest  of  Griseldas. 
As  little  did  she  believe,  —  and  to  the  expression  of 
her  disbelief  she  gave  much  indignant  force  of  phrase, 
—  as  little  did  she  believe  in  the  suggestions,  rather 
than  assertions,  of  the  ministers  of  the  elector,  that 
the  familiar  terms  which,  as  they  alleged,  existed 
between  the  electoral  princess  and  Count  Konigs- 
mark,  were  such  as  did  foul  wrong  to  her  husband, 
George  Louis.  Those  terms  were  not  more  familiar 
than  those  which  existed  between  the  electress  her- 


n8  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

self  and  her  favourite,  Leibnitz ;  but  the  electress 
was  neither  fair  nor  young,  and  Leibnitz  was  of 
neither  a  seductive  look  nor  age.  The  judges  of 
morality  at  once  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  youth 
and  good  looks  were  incompatible  with  propriety 
of  conduct. 

The  worst  that  could  have  been  alleged  against 
Sophia  Dorothea  at  this  period  was,  that  some  letters 
had  passed  between  her  and  Count  Konigsmark,  and 
that  the  latter  had  once  or  twice  had  private  audience 
of  the  electoral  princess.  Whatever  may  be  thought 
of  such  things  here  in  England,  and  the  present  age, 
they  have  never  been  accounted  of  in  Germany  but 
as  commonplace  circumstances,  involving  neither 
blame  nor  injury.  A  correspondence  between  two 
persons,  of  the  respective  ranks  of  the  electoral 
princess  and  the  count,  was  not  an  uncommon  occur- 
rence, —  save  that  it  was  not  often  that  two  such 
persons  had  either  the  taste  or  capacity  to  maintain 
such  intercourse.  As  to  an  occasional  interview,  such 
a  favour,  granted  by  ladies  of  rank  to  clever  con- 
versational men,  was  as  common  an  event  as  any 
throughout  the  empire ;  and  as  harmless  as  the  inter- 
views of  Leonora  and  that  very  selfish  personage,  the 
poet  Tasso.  The  simple  fact  appears  to  have  been, 
that,  out  of  a  very  small  imprudence,  —  if  imprudence 
it  may  be  called,  —  the  enemies  of  Sophia  Dorothea 
contrived  to  rear  a  structure  which  should  threaten 
her  with  ruin.  Her  exemplary  husband,  who  affected 
to  hold  himself  wronged  by  the  alleged  course 
adopted  by  his  consort,  had  abandoned  her,  in  the 
worst  sense  of  that  word.  He  had  never,  in  absence, 
made  her  hours  glad  by  letters,  whose  every  word  is 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  119 

dew  to  a  soul  athirst  for  assurances  of  even  simple 
esteem.  In  his  own  household  his  conversation  was 
seldom  or  never  addressed  to  his  wife ;  and,  when  it 
was,  never  to  enlighten,  raise,  or  cheer  her.  She 
may  have  conversed  and  corresponded  with  Konigs- 
mark,  but  no  society  then  construed  such  conversa- 
tion and  correspondence  as  crimes ;  and  even  had 
they  approached  in  this  case  to  a  limit  which  would 
have  merited  stern  censure,  the  last  man  who  should 
have  stooped  to  pick  up  a  stone  to  cast  at  the  repu- 
tation of  his  consort  was  that  George  Louis,  whose 
affected  indignation  was  expressed  from  a  couch  with 
Mile,  von  Schulemberg  at  his  side,  and  their  very 
old-fashioned  (as  to  look,  but  not  less  illegitimate  as 
to  fact)  baby,  playing,  in  much  unconsciousness  of 
her  future  distinction,  between  them. 

It  was  because  Sophia  Dorothea  had  not  been 
altogether  tamely  silent  touching  her  own  wrongs, 
that  she  had  found  enemies  trumpet-tongued  publish- 
ing a  forged  record  of  her  transgressions.  When 
Count  Molcke  had  become  implicated  in  the  little 
domestic  rebellion  of  Prince  Maximilian,  some  inti- 
mation was  conveyed  to  him,  that,  if  he  would  con- 
trive, in  his  defence,  to  mingle  the  name  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  in  the  details  of  the  trumpery  conspiracy, 
so  as  to  attach  suspicion  to  such  name,  his  own 
acquittal  would  be  secured.  The  count  was  a  gallant 
man,  refused  to  injure  an  unoffending  lady,  and  was 
beheaded ;  as  though  he  had  conspired  to  overthrow 
a  state,  instead  of  having  tried  to  help  a  discontented 
heir  in  the  disputed  settlement  of  some  family 
accounts. 

The  contempt  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  on  discovering 


120  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

to  what  lengths  the  intimacy  of  George  Louis  and 
Ermengarde  von  Schulemberg  had  gone,  found  bitter 
and  eloquent  expression.  Where  an  angry  contest 
was  to  be  maintained,  George  Louis  could  be  eloquent 
too;  and  in  these  domestic  quarrels,  not  only  is  he 
said  to  have  been  as  coarse  as  any  of  his  own  grooms, 
but  even,  on  one  occasion,  to  have  proceeded  to 
blows.  His  hand  was  on  her  throat,  and  the  wife 
and  mother  of  a  King  of  England  would  have  been 
strangled  by  her  exasperated  lord,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  intervention  of  the  courtiers,  who  rushed 
in,  and,  presumedly,  prevented  murder.  To  such  a 
story  wide  currency  was  given,  and  if  not  exact  to 
the  letter,  neither  can  it  be  said  to  be  without  foun- 
dation. As  little  can  it  be  said  to  be  without  prece- 
dent. 

William  the  Norman  was  a  mirror  of  knighthood, 
and  he  is  known  to  have  knocked  down  the  gentle 
Matilda  of  Flanders,  even  in  the  days  of  their  court- 
ship. The  blow  did  not  put  a  stop  to  their  wooing, 
nor  did  it  delay  a  merry  wedding,  which  one  would 
think  could  hardly  have  been  merry  under  such 
auspices.  Then  there  was  that  paragon  of  chivalry, 
the  elder  Aymon,  sire  of  the  "  Quatre  fils  Aymon  " 
of  the  romantic  legend :  that  gallant  gentleman  was 
not  only  accustomed  to  maltreat  his  lady  wife  by 
thumping  her  into  insensibility,  but  when  his  eldest 
son,  Reinold,  once  ventured  to  comment  upon  one 
of  those  pleasant  little  domestic  scenes,  to  the 
effect  that  they  interrupted  conviviality,  and  that 
his  respected  sire  should  either  chastise  the  speaker's 
mother  more  gently  or  elsewhere,  the  knightly  father 
was  so  enraged  at  this  approach  to  interference  on 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  121 

the  part  of  a  son,  in  behalf  of  a  mother  who  was 
lying  senseless  at  his  feet,  that,  taking  him  with  one 
hand  by  the  hair,  he  beat  his  face  with  the  other  and 
mailed  hand,  into  that  pulpy  consistency  which,  Pro- 
fessor Whewell  says,  possibly  distinguishes  the  inter- 
esting inhabitants  of  the  wide  and  desolate  plane  of 
the  planet  Jupiter.  From  this  contest,  however,  the 
old  knight  came  out  as  little  recognisable  in  human 
features  as  his  son,  so  chivalrously  had  they  mauled 
each  other.  So  much  for  precedent. 

The  example  has  been  followed  in  Germany  since 
the  days  of  George  Louis.  Louis  XVIII.  informs 
us  in  his  memoirs,  that  when  the  daughter  of 
Louis  XVI.  found  a  refuge  at  Vienna,  after  her 
liberation  from  the  Temple,  she  was  urged  by  the 
empress  to  consent  to  a  marriage  with  one  of  the 
imperial  archdukes,  and  that  the  empress  became  at 
last  so  enraged  by  the  firm  and  repeated  refusals  of 
"  Madame  Royale  "  to  acquiesce  in  the  proposal,  that 
on  one  occasion  her  Imperial  Majesty  seized  the 
royal  orphan  by  the  arm,  and  descended  to  "  votes  de 
fait"  in  other  words,  visited  the  young  and  destitute 
princess  with  a  shower  of  hard  blows. 

The  ill-treatment  of  George  Louis  drove  Sophia 
Dorothea  to  Zell,  and  the  wrath  of  her  husband  and 
the  intrigues  of  Von  Platen  made  of  that  residence 
anything  but  a  refuge.  The  duke  refused  to  give 
permission  to  his  daughter  to  remain  longer  in  his 
palace  than  was  consistent  with  the  limit  of  an 
ordinary  visit.  She  petitioned  most  urgently,  and 
her  mother  seconded  her  prayer  with  energy  as 
warm,  that  for  the  present  she  might  make  of  Zell 
a  temporary  home.  Her  angry  father  would  not 


122  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

listen  to  the  request  of  either  petitioner ;  on  the 
contrary,  he  intimated  to  his  daughter  that,  if  she  did 
not  return  to  Hanover  by  a  stated  period,  she  would 
be  permanently  separated  from  her  children.  On 
the  expression  of  this  threat  she  ceased  to  press  for 
leave  to  remain  longer  absent  from  Hanover ;  and 
when  the  day  named  for  her  departure  arrived,  she 
set  out  once  more  for  the  scene  of  her  old  miseries, 
anticipation  of  misery  yet  greater  in  her  heart,  and 
with  nothing  to  strengthen  her  but  a  mother's  love, 
and  to  guide  her  but  a  mother's  counsel.  Neither 
was  able  to  save  her  from  the  ruin  under  which  she 
was  so  soon  overwhelmed. 

Her  return  had  been  duly  announced  to  the  court 
of  Hanover,  and  so  much  show  of  outward  respect 
was  vouchsafed  to  her  as  consisted  in  a  portion  of 
the  electoral  family  repairing  to  the  country  residence 
of  Herrnhausen  to  meet  her  on  her  way,  and  accom- 
pany her  to  the  capital.  Of  this  attention,  however, 
she  was  unaware,  and  she  passed  Herrnhausen  at  as 
much  speed  as  could  then  be  shown  by  electoral  post- 
horses.  It  is  said  that  her  first  intention  was  to  have 
stopped  at  the  country  mansion,  where  the  electoral 
party  was  waiting  to  do  her  honour;  that  she  was 
aware  of  the  latter  fact,  but  that  she  hurried  on  her 
way  for  the  reason  that  she  saw  the  Countess  von 
Platen  seated  at  one  of  the  windows  looking  on  to 
the  road,  and  that,  rather  than  encounter  her,  she 
offended  nearly  a  whole  family,  who  were  more  nice 
touching  matters  of  etiquette  than  they  were  touch- 
ing matters  of  morality.  The  members  of  this  family, 
in  waiting  to  receive  a  young  lady,  against  whom 
they  considered  that  they  were  not  without  grounds 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  123 

of  complaint,  were  lost  in  a  sense  of  horror  which 
was  farcical,  and  of  indignation  at  violated  proprieties, 
which  must  have  been  as  comical  to  look  at,  as  it  no 
doubt  was  intense.  The  farcical  nature  of  the  scene 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact,  that  these  good  people,  by 
piling  their  agony  beyond  measure,  made  it  ridiculous. 
There  was  no  warrant  for  their  horror,  no  cause  for 
their  indignation ;  and  when  they  all  returned  to 
Hanover,  following  on  the  track  of  a  young  princess 
whose  contempt  of  ceremony  tended  to  give  them 
strange  suspicions  as  to  whether  she  possessed  any 
remnant  of  virtue  at  all,  these  very  serene  princes 
and  princesses  were  as  supremely  ridiculous  as  any 
of  the  smaller  people  worshipping  ceremony  in  that 
never-to-be-forgotten  city  of  Kotzebue's  painting, 
called  Krahwinkel. 

When  Sophia  Dorothea  passed  by  Herrnhausen, 
regardless  of  the  company  who  awaited  her  there, 
she  left  the  persons  of  a  complicated  drama  stand- 
ing in  utter  amazement  on  one  of  the  prettiest  of 
theatres.  Herrnhausen,  the  "  master's  mansion," 
was  a  name  given  to  trim  gardens,  as  well  as  to  the 
edifice  surrounded  by  them.  At  the  period  of  which 
we  are  treating,  the  grounds  were  a  scene  of  delight ; 
the  fountains  tasteful,  the  basins  large,  and  the  water 
abundant.  The  maze,  or  wilderness,  was  the  wonder 
of  Germany,  and  the  orangery  the  pride  of  Europe. 
There  was  also,  what  may  still  be  seen  in  some  of 
the  pleasure-grounds  of  German  princes,  a  perfectly 
rustic  theatre,  complete  in  itself,  with  but  little  help 
from  any  hand  but  that  of  nature.  The  seats  were 
cut  out  of  the  turf,  the  verdure  resembled  green 
velvet,  and  the  chances  of  rheumatism  must  have 


124  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

been  many.  There  was  no  roof  but  the  sky,  and  the 
dressing-rooms  of  the  actors  were  lofty  bowers  con- 
structed near  the  stage ;  the  whole  was  adorned  with 
a  profusion  of  gilded  statues,  and  kept  continually 
damp  by  an  incessant  play  of  spray-scattering  water- 
works. The  grand  tableau  of  rage  in  this  locality,  as 
Sophia  Dorothea  passed  unheedingly  by,  must  have 
been  a  spectacle  worth  the  contemplating. 


to  '10(1  bi 

\«fCT\  V*JV<    ! 


'HE  QL'EF 


ms  of  t;  •,  were  lofty 

the  whole  was  adon 
gilded  statues,  and  kej  uafly 

da»p  by  an  incessant  play  of  spray-scattering  w 
xs.     The  grand  tableau  of  rage  in  this  locality 

*  passed  unheedingly  by,  must  have 
a  spect^  ntemplating. 


Sophia  Dorothea,  Consort  of  George  I. 

Photogravure  from  a  rare  print 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

THE    CATASTROPHE 

The  Scheming  Mother  Foiled  —  Count  Konigsmark  Too  Garrulous 
in  His  Cups  —  An  Eavesdropper — A  Forged  Note — A  Mis- 
tress's Revenge  —  Murder  of  the  Count  —  The  Countess  Aurora 
Konigsmark's  Account  of  Her  Brother's  Intimacy  with  the  Prin- 
cess —  Horror  of  the  Princess  on  Hearing  of  the  Count's  Death 
—  Seizure  and  Escape  of  Mile,  von  Knesebeck  —  A  Divorce 
Mooted  —  The  Princess's  Declaration  of  Her  Innocence  — 
Decision  of  the  Consistorial  Court  —  The  Sages  of  the  Law 
Foiled  by  the  Princess  —  Condemned  to  Captivity  in  the  Castle  of 
Ahlden — Decision  Procured  by  Bribery — Bribery  Universal  in 
England  —  The  Countess  Aurora  Konigsmark  Becomes  the  Mis- 
tress of  Augustus,  King  of  Poland  —  Her  Unsuccessful  Mission 
to  Charles  XII.  —  Exemplary  Conduct  in  Her  Latter  Years  — 
Becomes  Prioress  of  the  Nunnery  of  Quedlinburg. 

WITH  the  return  of  Sophia  Dorothea  to  Hanover, 
her  enemies  appear  to  have  commenced  more  actively 
their  operations  against  her.  George  Louis  was  lan- 
guidly amusing  himself  with  Ermengarde  von  Schu- 
lemberg  and  their  little  daughter  Petronilla  Melusina. 
The  Countess  von  Platen  was  in  a  state  of  irritability 
at  the  presence  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  and  the  absence 
of  Konigsmark.  The  last-mentioned  person  had,  in 
his  wide-spread  adoration,  offered  a  portion  of  his 
homage  to  both  the  countess  and  her  daughter.  The 
elder  lady,  while  accepting  as  much  of  the  incense 

125 


126  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

for  herself  as  was  safe  to  inhale,  endeavoured  to 
secure  the  count  as  a  husband  for  her  daughter. 
Her  failure  only  increased  her  bitterness  against  the 
count,  and  by  no  means  lent  less  asperity  to  the  sen- 
timent with  which  she  viewed  Sophia  Dorothea.  She 
was,  no  doubt,  the  chief  cause,  primarily  and  approx- 
imate, of  the  ruin  which  fell  upon  both. 

It  was  not  merely  the  absence  of  Konigsmark,  who 
was  on  a  visit  to  the  riotous  court  of  Augustus  of 
Saxony,  which  had  scared  her  spirit ;  the  reports 
which  were  made  to  her  of  his  conversation  there 
gave  fierceness  to  her  resentment,  and  called  into 
existence  that  desire  of  bloody  vengeance  which 
she  accomplished,  but  without  profiting  by  the 
wickedness. 

There  was  no  more  welcome  guest  at  Dresden 
than  Konigsmark.  An  individual  so  gallant  of 
bearing,  handsome  of  feature,  easy  of  principle, 
and  lively  of  speech,  was  sure  to  be  warmly  wel- 
comed at  that  dissolute  court.  He  played  deeply, 
and  whatever  sums  he  might  lose,  he  never  lost  his 
temper.  He  drank  as  deeply  as  he  played ;  not 
quite  so  deeply,  perhaps,  as  the  old  Emperor  Maxi- 
milian, or  as  the  older  Persians,  who  could  boast, 
when  they  had  nothing  else  left  to  boast  of,  that 
they  could  drink  more  than  any  other  men  without 
being  overpowered  by  their  liquor.  But  Konigsmark 
was  inferior  to  both  the  Persians  of  old,  and  to  the 
more  modern  toper  Maximilian  in  discretion  under 
wine.  He  then  became  as  loquacious  as  Cassio,  but 
more  given  to  slander.  He  was  then  as  prodigal, 
too,  of  flattery.  No  man  was  more  open  to  the 
double  peril  named  by  Doctor  South,  when  he  said, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  127 

that  "as  by  flattery  a  man  opens  his  bosom  to  his 
mortal  enemy,  so,  by  detraction  and  slander,  he 
shuts  the  same  to  his  best  friends."  It  was  not  that 
he  had  that  secret  propensity  of  the  mind  to  think 
ill  of  all  men,  which  is  followed  by  the  utterance  of 
such  sentiments  in  ill-natured  expressions,  the  which, 
according  to  Theophrastus,  constitutes  slander.  He 
spoke  ill  of  others  out  of  mere  thoughtlessness,  or  at 
times  out  of  mere  vanity.  He  possessed  not  what 
Swift  calls  the  "lower  prudence"  of  discretion. 
"Vanity,"  says  Jeremy  Collier,  "is  a  strong  tempta- 
tion to  lying ; "  and  in  detailing  its  characteristics 
and  consequences,  he  names,  among  others,  that  it 
"  makes  men  tell  strange  stories  of  their  interest  and 
acquaintance."  Konigsmark  in  some  degree  illus- 
trated these  remarks ;  and  his  vanity,  and  the  stories 
to  which  it  prompted  him,  seemed  to  amuse  and  in- 
terest the  idle  and  scandalous  court  where  he  was  so 
welcome  a  guest. 

He  kept  the  illustriously  wicked  company  there  in 
an  uninterrupted  ecstasy  by  the  tales  he  told,  and  the 
point  he  gave  to  them,  of  the  chief  personages  of 
the  court  of  Hanover.  He  retailed  anecdotes  of  the 
elector  and  his  son,  George  Louis,  and  warmly 
tinted  stories  of  the  shameless  mistresses  of  that 
exemplary  parent,  and  no  less  exemplary  child.  He 
did  not  spare  even  the  Electress  Sophia ;  but  she 
was,  after  all,  too  respectable  for  Konigsmark  to  be 
able  to  make  of  her  a  subject  of  ridicule.  This  sub- 
ject he  found  in  ladies  of  smaller  virtue  and  less 
merit  generally.  Touching  them  his  anecdotes  were 
of  a  quality  to  suit  a  "  Chronique  Scandaleuse,"  to 
delight  Brant6me,  and  to  have  made  the  very  ghost 


128  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

of  Boccaccio  smile.  But  every  word  he  uttered,  in 
sarcastic  description  of  the  life,  character,  and  be- 
haviour of  the  favourites  of  the  Elector  of  Hanover 
and  his  son,  found  its  way,  with  no  loss  of  pungency 
on  the  road,  to  the  ears  of  those  persons  whom  the 
report  was  most  likely  to  offend.  His  warm  advo- 
cacy of  Sophia  Dorothea,  expressed  at  the  table  of 
Augustus  of  Saxony,  was  only  an  additional  offence ; 
and  George  Louis  was  taught  to  think  that  Count 
Konigsmark  had  no  right  to  ask,  with  Pierre,  "  May 
not  a  man  wish  his  friend's  wife  well,  and  no  harm 
done  ? " 

The  count  returned  to  Hanover  soon  after  Sophia 
Dorothea  had  arrived  there,  subsequent  to  her  pain- 
ful visit  to  the  little  court  of  her  ducal  parents  at 
Zell.  In  this  connection  of  circumstances  there  was 
nothing  prearranged ;  and  no  one  could  be  more  sur- 
prised probably  than  the  count  himself,  when,  shortly 
after  his  resuming  his  duties  as  colonel  of  the  elect- 
oral guard,  he  received  a  note  from  the  princess, 
written  in  pencil,  and  expressing  a  wish  to  see  him 
in  her  chamber. 

The  note  was  a  forged  document,  —  as  confessed 
by  the  Countess  von  Platen,  when  confession  came 
too  late  for  the  repair  of  evil  which  could  not  be 
undone.  Nevertheless,  the  count,  on  presenting 
himself  to  Mile.  Knesebeck,  the  lady  of  honour 
to  the  princess,  was  admitted  to  the  presence  of 
the  latter.  This  indiscreet  step  was  productive  of 
terrible  consequences  to  all  the  three  who  were 
present.  The  count,  on  being  asked  to  explain  the 
reason  of  his  seeking  an  interview  with  the  princess, 
at  an  advanced  hour  of  the  evening,  produced  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  129 

note  of  invitation,  which  Sophia  Dorothea  at  once 
pronounced  to  be  a  forgery.  Had  they  then  sepa- 
rated, little  of  ill  consequence  might  have  followed. 
The  most  discreet  of  the  three,  and  the  most  per- 
plexed at  the  "situation,"  was  the  lady  of  honour. 
The  memoirs  which  bear  her  name,  and  which 
describe  this  scene,  present  to  us  a  woman  of  some 
weakness,  yet  one  not  wanting  in  discernment.  In 
proof  of  the  latter,  it  may  be  stated  that,  as  she  had 
long  previously  suspected  the  count  to  be  a  worthless 
libertine,  so  on  this  night  suspicion  was  followed  by 
conviction. 

Sophia  Dorothea,  it  would  seem,  could  dwell  upon 
no  subject  but  that  of  her  domestic  troubles,  the 
cruel  neglect  of  her  husband,  and  her  desire  to  find 
somewhere  the  refuge  from  persecution  which  had 
been  denied  to  her  in  her  old  home  at  Zell.  More 
dangerous  topics  could  not  have  been  treated  by  two 
such  persons.  The  count,  it  is  affirmed,  ventured  to 
suggest  that  Paris  would  afford  her  such  a  refuge, 
and  that  he  should  be  but  too  happy  to  be  permitted 
to  give  her  such  protection  as  she  could  derive  from 
his  escort  thither.  This  was  probably  rather  hinted 
than  suggested ;  but  however  that  may  be,  only  one 
course  should  have  followed  even  a  distant  hint  lead- 
ing to  so  unwarrantable  an  end.  The  interview 
should  have  been  brought  to  a  close.  It  was  still 
continued,  nevertheless,  to  the  annoyance,  if  not 
scandal,  of  the  faithful  Knesebeck  ;  whose  fears  may 
have  received  some  little  solace  on  hearing  her  mis- 
tress express  a  desire  to  find  at  least  a  temporary 
home  at  the  court  of  her  cousin,  Duke  Anthony 
Ulric  of  Wolfenbiittel. 


130  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

While  this  discussion  was  proceeding,  the  Countess 
von  Platen  was  by  no  means  idle.  She  had  watched 
the  count  to  the  bower  into  which  she  had  sent  him 
by  the  employment  of  a  false  lure,  and  she  thereupon 
hastened  to  the  elector  to  communicate  what  she 
termed  her  discovery.  Ernest  Augustus,  albeit  wax- 
ing old,  was  by  no  means  infirm  of  judgment.  If 
Konigsmark  was  then  in  the  chamber  of  his  daughter- 
in-law,  he  refused  to  see  in  the  fact  anything  more 
serious  than  its  own  impropriety.  That,  however,  was 
crime  enough  to  warrant  the  arrest  which  the  coun- 
tess solicited.  The  old  elector  yielded  to  all  she 
asked,  except  credence  of  her  assurance  that  Sophia 
Dorothea  must  be  as  guilty  as  Konigsmark  was 
presuming.  He  would  consent  to  nothing  further, 
than  the  arrest  of  him  who  was  guilty  of  the  pre- 
sumption ;  and  the  method  of  this  arrest  he  left 
to  the  conduct  of  the  countess,  who  urgently  so- 
licited it  as  a  favour,  and  with  solicitation  of  such 
earnestness  that  the  old  elector  affected  to  be 
jealous  of  the  interest  she  took  in  such  a  case,  and 
added  playfully  the  expression  of  his  opinion,  that, 
angry  as  she  seemed  to  be  with  the  count,  he  was 
too  handsome  a  man  to  be  likely  to  meet  with  ill- 
treatment  at  her  hands. 

Armed  with  this  permission,  she  proceeded  to  the 
body  of  soldiers  or  watch  for  the  night,  and  exhibit- 
ing her  written  warrant  for  what  she  demanded, 
requested  that  a  guard  might  be  given  to  her,  for  a 
purpose  which  she  would  explain  to  them.  Some 
four  or  five  men  of  this  household  body  were  told 
off,  and  these  were  conducted  by  her  to  a  large  apart- 
ment, called  the  Hall  of  Knights,  through  which 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  131 

Kb'nigsmark  must  pass,  if  he  had  not  yet  quitted  the 
princess's  chamber. 

They  were  then  informed  that  their  office  was  to 
arrest  a  criminal,  whose  person  was  described  to 
them,  of  whose  safe  custody  the  elector  was  so 
desirous  that  he  would  rather  that  such  criminal 
should  be  slain  than  that  he  should  escape.  They 
were  accordingly  instructed  to  use  their  weapons 
if  he  should  resist ;  and  as  their  courage  had  been 
heightened  by  the  double  bribe  of  much  wine  and 
a  shower  of  gold  pieces,  they  expressed  their  will- 
ingness to  execute  her  bidding,  and  only  too  well 
showed  by  their  subsequent  act  the  sincerity  of 
their  expression. 

At  length  Konigsmark  appeared,  coming  from  the 
princess's  apartment.  It  was  now  midnight.  He 
entered  the  Ritters'  Hall,  as  unsuspecting  of  the  fate 
before  him  as  the  great  Guise  was  of  his  destiny 
when  he  crossed  the  vast  and  dark  apartment  in  the 
Castle  of  Blois,  and  was  butchered,  ere  he  reached 
an  opposite  door  to  that  through  which  he  entered, 
by  the  hired  assassins  of  Henri  III. 

The  elector,  had  he  cared  much  for  the  honour  of 
his  daughter-in-law,  would  have  investigated  the  case 
himself.  The  husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea  might  have 
been  summoned  to  look  to  his  own  honour,  and  the 
peril  in  which  it  is  said  to  have  stood  that  night ;  but 
it  is  remarkable  that  at  this  very  time  he  was  absent 
on  a  visit  to  Berlin,  where  his  sister,  the  Electress  of 
Brandenburgh,  is  said  to  have  almost  called  a  blush 
upon  his  cheek  by  her  portraiture  of  his  conduct, 
and  a  detail  of  the  wrongs  by  which  he  had  inflicted 
vast  misery  upon  his  wife.  In  the  absence  of  these 


132  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

two  competent  authorities,  the  Electress  of  Hanover 
troubling  herself  little  with  any  affairs  less  weighty 
than  politics,  philosophy,  and  worsted  work,  the 
Countess  von  Platen  was  sovereign,  for  the  time 
being,  over  the  small  circle  of  Hanover,  of  which 
she  was  the  centre  —  and  the  sovereign  of  the  hour 
wielded  her  might  with  a  prompt  and  most  terrific 
energy. 

In  the  Ritters'  Hall  was  a  huge,  square,  ponder- 
ous stove,  looking  like  a  mausoleum,  silent  and  cold. 
It  reached  from  floor  to  roof,  and  hidden  by  one  of 
its  sides,  the  guard  awaited  the  coming  of  the  count. 
He  approached  the  spot,  passed  it,  was  seized  from 
behind,  and  immediately  drew  his  sword  to  defend 
himself  from  attack.  His  enemies  gave  him  but 
scant  opportunity  to  assail  them  in  his  own  defence, 
and  after  a  few  wild  passes  with  his  weapon,  he  was 
struck  down  by  the  spear,  or  old-fashioned  battle-axe, 
of  one  of  the  guards,  and  when  he  fell,  there  were 
three  wounds  in  him  out  of  any  one  of  which  life 
might  find  passage. 

On  feeling  himself  grow  faint,  he  —  and  in  this 
case,  like  a  thoroughly  true  and  gallant  man  — 
thought  of  the  lady  and  her  reputation.  The  last 
words  he  uttered  were,  "Spare  the  innocent  prin- 
cess !  "  soon  after  which  he  expired ;  but  not  before, 
as  is  reported  by  those  who  love  to  dwell  minutely 
on  subjects  of  horror,  not  before  the  Countess  von 
Platen  had  set  her  foot  triumphantly  upon  his  bloody 
face. 

Such  is  the  German  detail  of  this  assassination. 
It  is  added,  that  it  gave  extreme  annoyance  to  the 
elector,  to  whom  it  was  immediately  communicated ; 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  133 

that  the  body  was  forthwith  consigned  to  a  secure 
resting-place,  and  covered  with  quicklime  ;  and  that 
the  whole  bloody  drama  was  enacted  without  any  one 
being  aware  of  what  was  going  on,  save  the  actors 
themselves. 

In  Cramer's  "  Memoirs  of  the  Countess  of  Kbnigs- 
mark,"  the  fate  of  the  count  is  told  upon  the  alleged 
evidence  of  a  so-called  eye-witness.  It  differs  in 
several  respects  from  other  accounts,  but  is  clear 
and  simple  in  its  details,  —  though  it  is  not  to  be 
accepted  as  authentic,  simply  on  that  account.  It  is 
to  the  following  effect : 

"Bernhard  Zayer,  a  native  of  Heidelberg,  in  the 
Palatinate,  a  wax-image  maker,  and  artist  in  lacquer- 
work,  was  engaged  by  the  electoral  princess  to  teach 
her  his  art.  Being,  on  this  account,  continually 
in  the  princess's  apartment,  he  has  frequently  seen 
Count  Konigsmark  there,  who  looked  on  while  the 
princess  worked.  He  once  learned  in  confidence, 
from  the  electoral  princess's  groom  of  the  chambers, 
that  the  electoral  prince  was  displeased  about  the 
count,  and  had  sworn  to  break  his  neck,  which  Bern- 
hard  revealed  to  the  princess,  who  answered :  '  Let 
them  attack  Konigsmark  :  he  knows  how  to  defend 
himself.'  Some  time  afterward  there  was  an  opera, 
but  the  princess  was  unwell  and  kept  her  bed.  The 
opera  began,  and  as  the  count  was  absent  as  well  as 
the  princess,  first  a  page,  and  then  the  hoff-fourier 
were  sent  out  for  intelligence.  The  hoff-fourier  came 
back  running,  and  whispered  to  the  electoral  prince, 
and  then  to  his  Highness  the  elector.  But  the  elect- 
oral prince  went  away  from  the  opera  with  the  hoff- 
fourier.  Now  Bernhard  saw  all  this,  and  knew  what 


134  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

it  meant,  and  as  he  knew  the  count  was  with  the 
princess,  he  left  the  opera  secretly,  to  warn  her ;  and 
as  he  went  in  at  the  door,  the  other  door  was  opened, 
and  two  masked  persons  rushed  in,  one  exclaiming, 
'  So  !  then  I  find  you  ! '  The  count,  who  was  sitting 
on  the  bed,  with  his  back  to  the  door  by  which  the 
two  entered,  started  up,  and  whipped  out  his  sword, 
saying,  '  Who  can  say  anything  unbecoming  of  me  ?  ' 
The  princess,  clasping  her  hands,  said,  '  I,  a  princess, 
am  I  not  allowed  to  converse  with  a  gentleman  ? ' 
But  the  masks,  without  listening  to  reason,  slashed 
and  stabbed  away  at  the  count.  But  he  pressed  so 
upon  both,  that  the  electoral  prince  unmasked,  and 
begged  for  his  life,  while  the  hoff-fourier  came 
behind  the  count,  and  run  him  through  between 
the  ribs  with  his  sabre,  so  that  he  fell,  saying,  '  You 
are  murderers,  before  God  and  man,  who  do  me 
wrong ! '  But  they  both  of  them  gave  him  more 
wounds,  so  that  he  lay  as  dead.  Bernhard,  seeing 
all  this,  hid  himself  behind  the  door  of  the  other 
room." 

Bernhard  was  subsequently  sent  by  the  princess 
to  spy  out  what  they  would  do  with  Konigsmark. 

"  When  the  count  was  in  the  vault,  he  came  a 
little  to  himself,  and  spoke  :  '  You  take  a  guiltless 
man's  life.  On  that  I'll  die,  but  do  not  let  me  perish 
like  a  dog,  in  my  blood  and  my  sins.  Grant  me  a 
priest,  for  my  soul's  sake.'  Then  the  electoral  prince 
went  out,  and  the  fourier  remained  alone  with  him. 
Then  was  a  strange  parson  fetched,  and  a  strange 
executioner,  and  the  fourier  fetched  a  great  chair. 
And  when  the  count  had  confessed,  he  was  so  weak 
that  three  or  four  of  them  lifted  him  into  the  chair ; 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  135 

and  there  in  the  prince's  presence  was  his  head  laid 
at  his  feet.  And  they  had  tools  with  them,  and  they 
dug  a  hole  in  the  right  corner  of  the  vault,  and  there 
they  laid  him,  and  there  he  must  be  to  be  found. 
When  all  was  over,  this  Bernhard  slipped  away  from 
the  castle;  and  indeed  Counsellor  Lucius,  who  was 
a  friend  of  the  princess's,  sent  him  some  of  his  livery 
to  save  him ;  for  they  sought  him  in  all  corners, 
because  they  had  seen  him  in  the  room  during  the 
affray.  .  .  .  And  what  Bernhard  Zayer  saw  in  the 
vault,  he  saw  through  a  crack." 

Clear  as  this  narrative  is  in  its  details,  it  is  contra- 
dictory in  some  of  them,  and  yet  it  probably  rests  on 
some  basis  of  truth. 

The  Countess  Aurora  of  Konigsmark  has  left  a 
statement  of  her  brother's  connection  with  the  prin- 
cess, in  which  the  innocence  of  the  latter  is  main- 
tained, but  his  imprudence  acknowledged.  The 
statement  referred  to,  explains  the  guilty  nature  of 
the  intercourse  kept  up  between  Konigsmark  and  the 
Countess  von  Platen.  It  is  written  in  terms  of  ex- 
treme indelicacy.  We  may  add  that  the  faithful  Von 
Knesebeck,  on  whose  character  no  one  ever  cast  an 
imputation,  in  her  examination  before  the  judges, 
argued  the  innocence  of  her  accused  mistress  upon 
grounds,  the  nature  of  which  cannot  even  be  alluded 
to.  The  princess,  it  is  clear,  had  urged  Konigsmark 
to  renew  his  interrupted  intrigue  with  Von  Platen, 
out  of  dread  that  the  latter,  taking  the  princess  as 
the  cause  of  the  intercourse  having  been  broken  off, 
should  work  a  revenge  which  she  did  not  hesitate  to 
menace  upon  the  princess  herself. 

The  details  of  both  stories  are  marked  by  great 


136  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

improbability,  but  they  have  been  in  part  substanti- 
ated by  the  death-bed  confessions  of  the  Countess 
von  Platen,  and  Baumain,  one  of  the  guards,  —  the 
two  criminals  having,  without  so  intending  it,  con- 
fessed to  the  same  clergyman,  —  a  minister  named 
Kramer.  Though  these  confessions  are  spoken  of, 
and  are  even  cited  by  German  authors,  their  authen- 
ticity cannot  perhaps  be  warranted.  At  all  events, 
there  is  what  I  may  term  an  English  version  of  the 
details  of  this  murder  given  by  Horace  Walpole,  and 
as  that  lively  writer  founded  his  lugubrious  details 
upon  authority  which  he  deemed  could  not  be  gain- 
said, they  may  fairly  find  a  place,  by  way  of  supple- 
ment to  the  foreign  version. 

"  Konigsmark's  vanity,"  says  Walpole,  "  the  beauty 
of  the  electoral  princess,  and  the  neglect  under  which 
he  found  her,  encouraged  his  presumptions  to  make 
his  addresses  to  her,  not  covertly,  and  she,  though 
believed  not  to  have  transgressed  her  duty,  did 
receive  them  too  indiscreetly.  The  old  elector 
flamed  at  the  insolence  of  so  stigmatised  a  pretender, 
and  ordered  him  to  quit  his  dominions  the  next  day. 
This  princess,  surrounded  by  women  too  closely  con- 
nected with  her  husband,  and  consequently  enemies 
of  the  lady  they  injured,  was  persuaded  by  them  to 
suffer  the  count  to  kiss  her  hand,  before  his  abrupt 
departure ;  and  he  was  actually  introduced  by  them 
into  her  bedchamber  the  next  morning  before  she 
rose.  From  that  moment  he  disappeared,  nor  was  it 
known  what  became  of  him,  till  on  the  death  of  George 
I.,  on  his  son,  the  new  king's  first  journey  to  Hano- 
ver, some  alterations  in  the  palace  being  ordered  by 
him,  the  body  of  Konigsmark  was  discovered  under 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  137 

the  floor  of  the  electoral  princess's  dressing-room ; 
the  count  having  probably  been  strangled  there,  the 
instant  he  left  her,  and  his  body  secreted.  The  dis- 
covery was  hushed  up.  George  II.  (the  son  of  Sophia 
Dorothea)  entrusted  the  secret  to  his  wife,  Queen 
Caroline,  who  told  it  to  my  father  ;  but  the  king  was 
too  tender  of  the  honour  of  his  mother  to  utter  it  to 
his  mistress ;  nor  did  Lady  Suffolk  ever  hear  of  it, 
till  I  informed  her  of  it  several  years  afterward.  The 
disappearance  of  the  count  made  his  murder  suspected, 
and  various  reports  of  the  discovery  of  his  body  have 
of  late  years  been  spread,  but  not  with  the  authentic 
circumstances." 

To  turn  to  the  German  sources  of  information  :  we 
are  told  by  these,  that  after  the  departure  of  Konigs- 
mark  from  the  chamber  of  the  princess,  she  was 
engaged  in  arranging  her  papers,  and  in  securing  her 
jewels,  preparatory,  as  she  hoped,  to  her  anticipated 
removal  to  the  court  of  Wolfenbiittel.  She  was,  of 
course,  kept  in  ignorance  of  the  count's  assassination  ; 
but  she  was  perplexed  by  his  disappearance,  and 
alarmed  when  she  heard  that  all  his  papers  had  been 
seized  and  conveyed  to  the  elector  for  his  examina- 
tion. Some  notes  had  passed  between  them :  and, 
innocent  as  they  were,  she  felt  annoyed  at  the  thought 
that  their  existence  should  be  known,  still  more  that 
they  should  be  perused.  To  their  most  innocent  ex- 
pressions, the  Countess  von  Platen,  who  examined 
them  with  the  elector,  gave  a  most  guilty  interpreta- 
tion ;  and  she  so  wrought  upon  Ernest  Augustus, 
that  he  commissioned  no  less  a  person  than  the 
Count  von  Platen  to  interrogate  the  princess  on  the 
subject.  I  have  previously  said  that  she  did  not  lack 


138  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

spirit ;  and  when  the  coarse-minded  count  began  to 
put  coarse  questions  to  her,  as  to  the  degree  of 
intercourse  which  had  existed  between  herself  and 
the  count,  she  spiritedly  remarked  that  he  appeared 
to  imagine  that  he  was  examining  into  the  conduct  of 
his  own  wife,  a  thrust  which  he  repaid,  by  bluntly 
informing  her  that,  whatever  intercourse  may  have 
existed,  it  would  never  be  renewed,  seeing  that  sure 
intelligence  had  been  received  of  Konigsmark's 
death. 

Sophia  Dorothea,  shocked  at  this  information,  and 
at  the  manner  in  which  it  was  conveyed,  had  no 
friend  in  whom  she  could  repose  confidence  but  her 
faithful  lady  in  waiting,  Mile,  von  Knesebeck.  The 
princess  could  have  had  no  more  ardent  defender 
than  this  worthy  attendant.  But  the  assertions 
made  by  the  latter,  in  favour  of  the  mistress  whom 
she  loved,  were  not  at  all  to  the  taste  of  the  enemies 
of  that  mistress,  and  the  speedy  result  was,  that 
Mile,  von  Knesebeck  was  arrested,  and  carried 
away  to  the  castle  of  Schartzfeld,  in  the  Hartz. 
She  was  there  kept  in  confinement  many  years  ;  but 
she  ultimately  escaped  so  cleverly  through  the  roof, 
by  the  help  of  a  tiler,  or  a  friend  in  the  likeness  of  a 
tiler,  that  the  credit  of  the  success  of  the  attempt 
was  given  by  the  governor  of  the  gaol  to  the  demons 
of  the  adjacent  mountains. 

Sophia  Dorothea  had  now  but  one  immediate  ear- 
nest wish,  namely,  to  retire  from  Hanover.  Already 
the  subject  of  a  divorce  had  been  mooted,  but  the 
elector  being  somewhat  fearful  that  a  divorce  might 
affect  his  son's  succession  to  his  wife's  inheritance, 
and  even  obstruct  the  union  of  Zell  with  Hanover,  an 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  139 

endeavour   was    made  to  reconcile  the  antagonistic 
spouses,  and  to  bury  past  dissensions  in  oblivion. 

It  was  previous  to  this  attempt  being  entered  upon, 
and  perhaps  because  it  was  contemplated,  that  the 
princess  voluntarily  underwent  a  very  solemn  ordeal, 
—  if  I  may  so  speak  of  the,  at  least  solemn,  ceremony 
to  which  I  here  allude.  The  ceremony  was  as  public 
as  it  could  be  rendered  by  the  presence  of  part  of 
the  electoral  family,  and  the  great  official  dignitaries 
of  the  Church  and  government.  Before  them,  Sophia 
Dorothea  partook  of  the  sacrament  of  the  body  and 
blood  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour,  and  then  made 
solemn  protestation  of  her  innocence,  and  of  her 
unspotted  faith  toward  the  electoral  prince,  her  hus- 
band. At  the  termination  of  this  touching  ceremony 
she  was  insulted  by  an  incredulous  smile  which  she 
saw  upon  the  face  of  Count  von  Platen ;  whereat 
the  natural  woman  was  moved  within  her  to  ask 
him  if  his  own  excellent  wife  could  take  the  same 
oath,  in  attestation  of  her  unbroken  faithfulness  to 
him. 

The  essay  at  reconciliation  was  marred,  or  was 
rendered  impossible,  by  an  attempt  made  to  induce 
the  electoral  princess  to  confess  that  she  had  been 
guilty  of  sins  of  disobedience  toward  the  expressed 
will  of  her  consort.  All  endeavour  in  this  direction 
was  fruitless ;  and  though  grave  men  made  it,  it 
shows  how  very  little  they  comprehended  their  deli- 
cate mission.  The  princess  remained  fixed  in  her 
desire  to  withdraw  from  Hanover  ;  but  when  she  was 
informed  of  the  wound  this  would  be  to  the  feelings 
of  the  elector  and  electress,  and  that  George  Louis 
himself  was  heartily  averse  to  it,  she  began  to  waver, 


140  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

and  applied  to  her  friends  at  Zell,  among  others  to 
Bernstorf,  the  Hanoverian  minister  there,  asking  for 
counsel  in  this  her  great  need. 

Bernstorf,  an  ally  of  the  Von  Platens,  secretly 
advised  her  to  insist  upon  leaving  Hanover.  He 
assured  her,  pledging  his  word  for  what  he  said,  that 
she  would  find  a  happy  asylum  at  Zell ;  that  even 
her  father,  so  long  estranged  from  her,  would  receive 
her  with  open  arms ;  and  that  in  the  adoption  of  such 
a  step,  alone,  could  she  hope  for  happiness  and  peace 
during  the  remainder  of  her  life. 

Worse  counsel  could  not  have  been  given,  but  it 
was  given  exactly  because  it  was  the  worst. 

She  was  as  untruthfully  served  by  some  of  the 
ladies  of  her  circle,  who,  while  professing  friendship 
and  fidelity,  were  really  the  spies  of  her  husband, 
and  her  husband's  mistress.  They  were  of  that 
class  of  women  who  were  especially  bred  for  courts 
and  court  intrigues,  and  whose  hopes  of  fortune 
rested  upon  their  doing  credit  to  their  education.  In 
some  respect  they  resembled  the  deformed  and  mon- 
strous inmates  of  the  human  menagerie  of  the  Em- 
perors of  Mexico  ;  hideous  anomalies,  regarded  by 
the  Aztecs  as  a  suitable  appendage  of  state,  and 
dwarfed  and  twisted  into  hideousness  by  unnatural 
parents  desirous  to  procure  a  provision  for  their  off- 
spring by  thus  qualifying  them  for  a  place  in  the 
royal  museum. 

As  the  princess  not  merely  insisted  upon  quitting 
Hanover,  but  firmly  refused  to  acknowledge  that  she 
had  been  guilty  of  any  wrong  to  her  most  guilty 
husband,  a  course  was  adopted  by  her  enemies  which, 
they  considered,  would  not  merely  punish  her,  but 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  141 

would  transfer  her  possessions  to  her  consort,  with- 
out affecting  the  long  projected  union  of  Zell,  after 
the  duke's  death,  with  the  territory  of  Hanover.  An 
accusation  of  adultery,  even  if  it  could  be  sustained, 
of  which  there  was  not  the  shadow  of  a  chance, 
might,  if  carried  out  and  followed  by  a  divorce,  in 
some  way  affect  the  transfer  of  a  dominion  to  Han- 
over, which  transfer  rested  partly  on  the  rights  of 
the  wife  of  the  electoral  prince.  A  divorce  might 
destroy  the  ex-husband's  claims ;  but  he  was  well- 
provided  with  lawyers  to  watch  and  guard  the  case 
to  an  ultimate  conclusion  in  his  favour. 

A  consistorial  court  was  formed,  of  a  strangely 
mixed  character,  for  it  consisted  of  the  chief  ecclesi- 
astical lawyers,  and  some  civil  authorities  of  Hanover 
and  Zell.  It  had  no  other  authority  to  warrant  its 
proceedings  than  the  command  or  sanction  of  the 
elector,  and  the  consent  of  the  Duke  of  Zell,  whose 
ill-feeling  toward  his  child  seemed  to  increase  daily. 
The  only  charge  laid  against  the  princess  before  this 
anomalous  court,  was  one  of  incompatibility  of 
temper,  added  to  some  little  failings  of  character ; 
that  is,  of  disposition,  which  two  loving  hearts, 
warmed  by  a  mutual  respect,  might  have  adjusted  in 
a  few  minutes  by  a  brief  explanation. 

The  court  affected  to  attempt  some  such  adjust- 
ment of  the  matter ;  but  as  the  attempt  was  always 
based  on  another  to  drag  from  the  princess  a  confes- 
sion of  her  having,  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  given 
cause  of  offence  to  her  husband,  she  continued  firmly 
to  refuse  to  place  her  consort  in  the  right,  by  doing 
herself  and  her  cause  extremest  wrong. 

In  the  meantime,  during  an  adjournment  of  the 


142  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

court,  she  withdrew  to  Lauenau.  She  was  prohibited 
from  repairing  to  Zell,  but  there  was  no  longer  any 
opposition  made  to  her  leaving  the  capital  of  the 
electorate.  She  was,  however,  strictly  prohibited 
from  taking  her  children  with  her.  Her  parting 
from  these  was  as  painful  a  scene  as  can  well  be 
imagined,  for  she  is  said  to  have  felt  that  she  would 
never  again  be  united  with  them.  Her  son,  George 
Augustus,  was  then  ten  years  of  age,  and  her 
daughter,  Sophia,  two  years  younger.  The  homage 
of  these  children  was  rendered  to  their  mother  long 
after  their  hearts  had  ceased  to  pay  any  to  their 
father,  beyond  a  mere  conventional  respect. 

In  her  temporary  retirement  at  Lauenau,  she  was 
permitted  to  enjoy  very  little  repose.  The  friends  of 
the  electoral  prince  seem  to  have  been  anxious  lest 
she  should  publish  more  than  was  yet  known  of  the 
details  of  his  private  life.  This  fear  alone  can  account 
for  their  anxiety,  or  professed  anxiety  for  a  reconcili- 
ation. The  lawyers,  singly  or  in  couples,  and  now 
and  then  a  leash  of  them  together,  went  down  to 
Lauenau  to  hold  conference  with  her.  They  assailed 
her  socially,  scripturally,  legally ;  they  pointed  out 
how  salubrious  was  the  discipline  which  subjected  a 
wife  to  confess  her  faults.  They  read  to  her  whole 
chapters  from  Corinthians,  on  the  duties  of  married 
ladies,  and  asked  her  if  she  could  be  so  obstinate  and 
unorthodox  as  to  disregard  the  injunctions  of  St. 
Paul.  Finally,  they  quoted  codes  and  pandects,  to 
prove  that  a  sentence  might  be  pronounced  against 
her  under  contumacy,  and  concluded  by  recommend- 
ing her  to  trust  to  the  mercy  of  the  crown  prince, 
if  she  would  but  cast  herself  upon  his  honour. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  143 

They  were  grave  men,  sage,  learned,  experienced 
men ;  crafty,  cunning,  far-seeing  men ;  in  all  the 
circles  of  the  empire  men  were  not  to  be  found  more 
skilled  in  surmounting  difficulties  than  these  inde- 
fatigable men,  who  were  all  foiled  by  the  simplicity 
and  firmness  of  a  mere  child.  "If  I  am  guilty,"  said 
she,  "  I  am  unworthy  of  the  prince  :  if  I  am  innocent, 
he  is  unworthy  of  me  !  " 

Here  was  a  conclusion  with  which  the  sciolist,  as 
she  was  accounted,  utterly  confounded  the  sages. 
They  could  not  gainsay  it,  nor  refute  the  logic  by 
which  it  was  arrived  at,  and  which  gave  it  force. 
They  were  "perplexed  in  the  extreme,"  but  neither 
social  experience,  nor  scriptural  reading,  nor  legal 
knowledge  afforded  them  weapons  wherewith  to  beat 
down  the  simple  defences  behind  which  the  pure 
princess  had  entrenched  herself.  They  tried,  tried 
repeatedly,  but  tried  in  vain.  At  the  end  of  every 
trial  she  slowly  and  calmly  enunciated  the  same  con- 
clusive and  insuperable  reply :  "  If  I  am  guilty  I  am 
unworthy  of  him ;  if  I  am  innocent,  he  is  unworthy 
of  me  !  " 

From  this  text  she  would  not  depart ;  nor  could 
all  the  chicanery  of  all  the  courts  of  Germany  move 
her.  "At  least,"  said  the  luminaries  of  the  law,  as 
they  took  their  way  homeward,  re  infecta,  "at  least, 
this  woman  may,  of  a  surety,  be  convicted  of  obsti- 
nacy." We  always  stigmatise  as  obstinate  those  whom 
we  cannot  convince.  It  is  the  only,  and  the  poor, 
triumph  of  the  vanquished. 

This  triumph  was  achieved  by  the  consistory  court, 
the  members  of  which,  unable  to  prove  the  princess 
guilty  of  crime,  were  angry  because  she  would  not 


144  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

even  confess  to  the  commission  of  a  fault ;  that  is, 
of  such  a  fault  as  should  authorise  her  husband,  cov- 
ered with  guilt  triple-piled,  to  separate  from  her  per- 
son, yet  maintain  present  and  future  property  over 
her  estates. 

The  court,  however,  was  a  tribunal  which  did  not 
embarrass  itself  much  either  about  law  or  equity  ; 
and  its  decision,  in  December,  1694,  that  separation 
should  be  pronounced,  on  the  ground  of  incompati- 
bility of  temper,  surprised  no  one.  The  terms  of 
the  sentence  were  extraordinary,  for  they  amounted 
to  a  decree  of  divorce,  without  expressly  mentioning 
the  fact.  The  judgment,  wherein  nothing  was  judged, 
conferred  on  the  prince,  George  Louis,  the  right  of 
marrying  again,  if  he  should  be  so  minded,  and  could 
find  a  lady  willing  to  be  won.  It,  however,  explicitly 
debarred  the  princess  from  entering  into  a  second 
union.  Not  a  word  was  written  down  against  her 
alleging  that  she  was  criminal.  The  name  of  Konigs- 
mark  was  not  even  alluded  to.  Notwithstanding 
these  facts,  and  that  the  husband  was  the  really  guilty 
party,  while  the  utmost  which  can  be  said  against  the 
princess  was  that  she  may  have  been  indiscreet ;  not- 
withstanding this,  not  only  was  he  declared  to  be  an 
exceedingly  injured  individual,  but  the  poor  lady, 
whom  he  held  in  his  heart's  hottest  hate,  was  deprived 
of  her  property,  possession  of  which  was  transferred 
to  George  Louis,  in  trust  for  the  children ;  and  the 
princess,  endowed  with  an  annual  pension  of  some 
eight  or  ten  thousand  thalers,  was  condemned  to 
close  captivity  in  the  castle  of  Ahlden,  near  Zell, 
with  a  retinue  of  domestics,  whose  office  was  to 
watch  her  actions,  and  a  body  of  armed  gaolers, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  145 

whose  only  duty  was  to  keep  the  captive  secure  in 
her  bonds. 

Sophia  Dorothea  entered  on  her  imprisonment 
with  a  calm,  if  not  with  a  cheerful  heart  ;  certainly 
with  more  placidity  and  true  joy  than  George  Louis 
felt,  surrounded  by  his  mistresses  and  all  the  pomp 
of  the  electoral  state.  All  Germany  is  said  to  have 
been  scandalised  by  the  judgment  delivered  by  the 
court.  The  illegality,  and  the  in  competency  of  the 
court  from  which  it  emanated,  were  so  manifest,  that 
the  sentence  was  looked  upon  as  a  mere  wanton 
cruelty,  carrying  with  it  neither  conviction  nor  lawful 
consequence.  So  satisfied  was  the  princess's  advo- 
cate on  this  point  that  he  requested  her  to  give  him 
a  letter  declaring  him  non-responsible  for  having  so 
far  recognised  the  authority  of  the  court,  as  to  have 
pleaded  her  cause  before  it !  What  is  perhaps  more 
singular  still,  is  the  doubt  which  long  existed  whether 
this  court  ever  sat  at  all ;  and  whether  decree  of 
separation  or  divorce  was  ever  pronounced  in  the 
cause  of  Sophia  Dorothea  of  Zell,  and  George  Louis, 
Electoral  Prince  of  Hanover. 

Horace  Walpole  says,  on  this  subject :  "  I  am  not 
acquainted  with  the  laws  of  Germany  relative  to 
divorce  or  separation,  nor  do  I  know  or  suppose  that 
despotism  and  pride  allow  the  law  to  insist  on  much 
formality  when  a  sovereign  has  reason  or  mind  to  get 
rid  of  his  wife.  Perhaps  too  much  difficulty  in  unty- 
ing the  Gordian  knot  of  matrimony,  thrown  in  the 
way  of  an  absolute  prince,  would  be  no  kindness  to 
the  ladies,  but  might  prompt  him  to  use  a  sharper 
weapon,  like  that  butchering  husband,  our  Henry 
VIII.  Sovereigns,  who  narrow,  or  let  out  the  law 


146  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

of  God,  according  to  their  prejudices  and  passions, 
mould  their  own  laws,  no  doubt,  to  the  standard  of 
their  convenience.  Genealogic  purity  of  blood  is  the 
predominant  folly  of  Germany ;  and  the  code  of  Malta 
seems  to  have  more  force  in  the  empire  than  the  Ten 
Commandments.  Thence  was  introduced  that  most 
absurd  evasion  of  the  indissolubility  of  marriage,  es- 
pousals with  the  left  hand,  as  if  the  Almighty  had 
restrained  his  ordinance  to  one  half  of  a  man's  person, 
and  allowed  a  greater  latitude  to  his  left  side  than  to 
his  right,  or  pronounced  the  former  more  ignoble 
than  the  latter.  The  consciences  both  of  princely 
and  noble  persons  in  Germany  are  quieted  if  the  more 
plebeian  side  is  married  to  one  who  would  degrade 
the  more  illustrious  moiety ;  but,  as  if  the  laws  of 
matrimony  had  no  reference  to  the  children  to  be 
thence  propagated,  the  children  of  a  left-handed 
alliance  are  not  entitled  to  inherit.  Shocking 
consequence  of  a  senseless  equivocation,  which  only 
satisfies  pride,  not  justice,  and  is  calculated  for 
an  acquittal  at  the  heralds'  office,  not  at  the  last 
tribunal. 

"  Separated  the  Princess  (Sophia)  Dorothea  cer- 
tainly was,  and  never  admitted  even  to  the  nominal 
honours  of  her  rank,  being  thenceforward  always 
styled  the  Duchess  of  Halle.  Whether  divorced  is 
problematic,  at  least  to  me,  nor  can  I  pronounce,  as, 
though  it  was  generally  believed,  I  am  not  certain 
that  George  espoused  the  Duchess  of  Kendal  (Mile. 
von  Schulemberg)  with  his  left  hand.  But  though 
German  casuistry  might  allow  a  husband  to  take 
another  wife  with  his  left  hand,  because  his  legal  wife 
had  suffered  her  right  hand  to  be  kissed  by  a  gallant, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  147 

even  Westphalian  or  Aulic  counsellors  could  not  have 
pronounced  that  such  a  momentary  adieu  constituted 
adultery ;  and,  therefore,  of  a  formal  divorce  I  must 
doubt,  —  and  there  I  must  leave  that  case  of  con- 
science undecided  until  future  search  into  the  Hano- 
verian Chancery  shall  clear  up  a  point  of  little  real 
importance."  Coxe,  in  his  "Memoirs  of  Walpole," 
says,  on  the  other  hand,  very  decidedly  :  "  George  I., 
who  never  loved  his  wife,  gave  implicit  credit  to  the 
account  of  her  infidelity,  as  related  by  his  father; 
consented  to  her  imprisonment,  and  obtained  from 
the  ecclesiastical  consistory  a  divorce,  which  was 
passed  on  the  2Oth  of  December,  1694." 

The  researches  into  the  Chancery  of  Hanover, 
which  Walpole  left  to  posterity,  appear  to  have  been 
made,  and  the  decree  of  the  consistorial  court  which 
condemned  Sophia  Dorothea  has  been  copied,  and 
published.  It  is  quoted  in  the  life  of  the  princess, 
published  anonymously  in  1845,  an^  it  is  inserted 
below  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  like  to  read  his- 
tory by  the  light  of  documents. 

It  has  been  said  that  such  a  decree  could  only  have 
been  purchased  by  rank  bribery,  which  is  likely 
enough ;  for  the  courts  of  Germany  were  so  utterly 
corrupt  that  nothing  could  equal  them  in  infamy, — 
except  the  corruption  which  prevailed  in  England. 
In  the  very  year  in  which  this  decree  is  said  to  have 
been  bought,  bribery  and  corruption  were  corroding 
all  ranks  here,  among  ourselves.  English  officers  and 
soldiers  were  left  unpaid  by  the  government,  and  al- 
lowed to  exact  subsistence  money  from  the  owners 
of  the  houses  on  whom  they  were  quartered.  The 
army  agents,  even  when  provided  with  funds,  detained 


148  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  soldiers'  pay,  and  forced  the  men  to  give  extrava- 
gant premiums  for  the  money  doled  out  to  them.  In 
this  very  year,  Colonel  Hastings  was  cashiered  for 
compelling  his  officers  to  purchase  all  their  regimen- 
tals of  him  at  an  extravagant  rate.  Craggs,  the  con- 
tractor for  clothing  the  army,  was  deprived  of  his 
office,  and  sent  to  the  Tower,  for  refusing  to  exhibit 
his  books ;  and  Killegrew,  Villars,  and  Gee,  commis- 
sioners for  licensing  hackney-coaches,  were  ejected 
from  their  office,  because  they  sold  licenses  which 
they  were  commissioned  to  grant  without  fee  or 
reward.  These  punishments  were  inflicted  by  an 
indignant  and  pure  House  of  Commons,  which  com- 
pelled Mr.  Bird,  an  attorney,  to  go  upon  his  knees, 
and  ask  pardon  of  the  assembly  for  bribery,  or  for 
having  been  detected  in  awkwardly  attempting  to 
bribe  certain  members  of  the  House.  The  senators 
who  condemned  were  themselves  corrupt ;  and  in  the 
dirty  path  of  such  corruption,  Sir  John  Trevor,  the 
Speaker,  led  the  way.  He  was  expelled  for  receiving 
a  bribe  of  one  thousand  guineas  from  the  city  of  Lon- 
don "  for  passing  the  Orphan  Bill ;  "  though  men  quite 
as  corrupt  were  left  unpunished  for  receiving  vast 
sums  of  money  from  the  East  India  Company,  in  re- 
turn for  facilitating  some  bills  in  which  that  body  was 
interested.  The  method  adopted  by  the  House  to 
cure  the  evil  is  a  proof  of  the  strabismic  morality 
which  prevailed.  The  Commons  resolved,  "That 
whoever  should  discover  any  money,  or  other  gratu- 
ity, given  to  any  member  of  the  House,  for  matters 
transacted  in  the  House,  relating  to  the  Orphans  Bill, 
or  the  East  India  Company,  should  (himself)  have 
the  indemnity  of  the  House  for  such  guilt."  When 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  149 

immorality  was  so  universal  in  England  that  Parlia- 
ment could  only  attempt  to  cure  it  in  its  own  body 
by  encouraging  knaves  to  purchase  exemption  from 
penalty  by  turning  informers,  we  must  not  be  too 
pharisaically  severe  upon  the  owners  of  the  names 
affixed  to  the  subjoined  decree,  even  if  it  were  pur- 
chased by  what  Mr.  Paul  Clifford's  Bagshot  friend 
was  wont  to  call  "  the  oil  of  palms."  It  deserves  to 
be  remembered  that  Horace  Walpole,  who  knew 
something  of  the  history  of  corruption,  said  of  the 
Germans  of  his  and  his  father's  time,  not  only  that 
they  were  a  civil  and  agreeable  people,  but,  as  he 
believed,  "one  of  the  least  corrupted  nations  in 
Europe." 

"  In  the  matrimonial  suit  of  the  illustrious  Prince 
George  Louis,  Crown  Prince  of  Hanover,  against  his 
consort,  the  illustrious  Princess  Sophia  Dorothea,  we, 
constituted  president  and  judges  of  the  Matrimonial 
Court  of  the  Electorate  and  Duchy  of  Brunswick- 
Lunebourg,  declare  and  pronounce  judgment  after 
attempts  have  been  tried  and  have  failed,  to  settle 
the  matter  amicably,  and  in  accordance  with  the  doc- 
uments and  verbal  declarations  of  the  princess,  and 
other  detailed  circumstances,  we  agree  that  her  con- 
tinued denial  of  matrimonial  duty  and  cohabitation  is 
well  founded,  and  consequently  that  it  is  to  be  con- 
sidered as  an  intentional  desertion.  In  consequence 
whereof,  we  consider,  sentence,  and  declare  the  ties 
of  matrimony  to  be  entirely  dissolved  and  annulled. 
Since,  in  similar  cases  of  desertion,  it  has  been  per- 
mitted to  the  innocent  party  to  remarry,  which  the 
other  is  forbidden,  the  same  judicial  power  will  be 


150  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

exercised  in  the  present  instance,  in  favour  of  his 
Serene  Highness,  the  Crown  Prince. 

"  Published  in  the  Consistorial  Court  at  Hanover, 
December  28th,  1694. 

(Signed)  "PHILLIP  VON  BURSCHE. 

FRANCIS  EICHFELD  (Pastor). 

ANTHONY  GEORGE  HILDBERG. 

GUSTAVUS  MOLAN. 

GERHARDT  ART. 

BERNHARD  SPILKEN. 

ERYTHROPAL. 

DAVID  RUPERTUS. 

H.  L.  HATTORF." 


The  work  from  which  the  above  document  is 
extracted  furnishes  also  the  following,  as  the  copy 
of  the  letter  written  by  the  princess  at  the  request  of 
the  legal  conductor  of  her  case,  as  "security  from 
proceedings  in  relation  to  his  connection  with  her 
affairs : " 


"As  we  have  now,  after  being  made  acquainted 
with  the  sentence,  given  it  proper  consideration,  and 
resolved  not  to  offer  any  opposition  to  it,  our  solici- 
tor must  act  accordingly,  and  is  not  to  act  or  proceed 
any  further  in  this  matter.  For  the  rest,  we  hereby 
declare  that  we  are  gratefully  content  with  the  con- 
duct of  our  aforesaid  solicitor  of  the  court,  Thies,  and 
that  by  this  we  free  him  from  all  responsibility 
regarding  these  transactions. 

(Signed)  "  SOPHIA  DOROTHEA. 

" LauenaUy  December ji,  1694." 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  151 

By  this  last  document,  it  would  seem  that  the  Hof- 
Rath  Thies  would  have  denied  the  competency  of  the 
court,  had  he  been  permitted  to  do  so ;  and  that  he 
was  so  convinced  of  its  illegality,  as  to  require  a  writ- 
ten prohibition  from  asserting  the  same,  and  acknowl- 
edgment of  exemption  from  all  responsibility  before 
he  would  feel  satisfied  that  he  had  accomplished  his 
duty  toward  his  illustrious  client. 

Four  months  previous  to  the  publication  of  the 
sentence  of  the  consistorial  court,  the  two  brothers, 
the  Elector  of  Hanover  and  the  Duke  of  Zell,  had 
agreed,  by  an  enactment,  that  the  unhappy  marriage 
between  the  cousins  should  be  dissolved.  The  enact- 
ment provided  for  the  means  whereby  this  end  was 
to  be  achieved,  and  for  the  disposal  of  the  princess 
during  the  progress  of  the  case.  The  anonymous 
author  of  the  biography  of  1845  then  proceeds  to 
state  that :  "  It  was  therein  specified  that  her 
domestics  should  take  a  particular  oath,  and  that  the 
princess  should  enjoy  an  annual  income  of  eight  thou- 
sand thalers  (exclusive  of  the  wages  of  her  house- 
hold), to  be  increased  one-half  on  the  death  of  her 
father,  with  a  further  increase  of  six  thousand  thalers 
on  her  attaining  the  age  of  forty  years.  It  was  pro- 
vided that  the  castle  of  Ahlden  should  be  her  per- 
manent residence,  where  she  was  to  remain  well 
guarded.  The  domain  of  Wilhelmsburg,  near  Ham- 
burg, was,  at  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Zell,  to  de- 
scend to  the  prince,  son  of  the  Princess  Sophia  Doro- 
thea—  the  crown  prince,  however,  during  his  own 
life,  retaining  the  revenues ;  but  should  the  grandson 
die  before  his  father,  the  property  would  then,  on 
payment  of  a  stipulated  sum,  be  inherited  by  the 


152  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

successor  in  the  government  of  the  son  of  the  elector. 
By  a  further  arrangement,  the  mother  of  the  princess 
was  to  possess  Wienhausen,  with  an  annual  income 
of  twelve  thousand  thalers,  secured  on  the  estates 
Schernebeck,  Garze,  and  Bluettingen ;  the  castle  at 
Lunebourg  to  be  allowed  as  her  residence,  from  the 
commencement  of  her  widowhood." 

Never  was  so  much  care  taken  to  secure  property 
on  one  side,  and  the  person  on  the  other.  The  con- 
tracting parties  appear  to  have  been  afraid  lest  the 
prisoner  should  ever  have  an  opportunity  of  appealing 
against  the  wrong  of  which  she  was  made  the  victim  ; 
and  her  strait  imprisonment  was  but  the  effect  of 
that  fear.  That  nothing  might  be  neglected  to  make 
assurance  doubly  sure,  and  to  deprive  her  of  any  help 
she  might  hope  hereafter  to  receive  at  the  hands  of 
a  father,  whose  heart  might  possibly  be  made  to 
feel  his  own  injustice  and  his  daughter's  sorrows,  the 
Duke  of  Zell  was  induced  to  promise  that  he  would 
neither  see  nor  hold  communication  with  the  daughter 
he  had  repudiated. 

The  oath  to  be  taken  by  the  household,  or  rather 
by  the  personal  attendants,  counts  and  countesses  in 
waiting,  and  persons  of  similar  rank,  was  stringent 
and  illustrative  of  the  importance  attached  to  the 
safe-keeping  of  the  prisoner.  It  was  to  the  effect, 
"that  nothing  should  be  wanting  to  prevent  antici- 
pated intrigues  ;  and  for  the  perfect  security  of  the 
place  fixed  as  a  residence  for  the  Princess  Sophia 
Dorothea,  in  order  to  maintain  tranquillity,  and  to 
prevent  any  opportunity  occurring  to  an  enemy  for 
undertaking  or  imagining  anything  which  might  cause 
a  division  in  the  illustrious  family." 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  153 

Whatever  correspondence  may  have  been  held  by 
letter  between  Sophia  Dorothea  and  Konigsmark, 
none  was  ever  forthcoming  to  accuse  or  absolve.  It 
is  indeed  said  that  the  letters  of  the  princess  to  the 
count  were  saved  by  the  valet  of  the  latter,  and 
placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Lowenhaupt  family,  in 
Sweden,  to  a  member  of  which  a  younger  sister  of 
Konigsmark  was  married ;  and  that  among  the  ar- 
chives of  the  Swedish  family  they  are  still  preserved. 
This  is  a  very  apocryphal  story,  and  not  less  apocry- 
phal is  the  assertion  that  some  score  of  letters, 
allegedly  from  the  count  to  the  princess,  were  dis- 
covered by  George  Louis,  and  copies  of  them  sent  to 
the  Duke  of  Zell.  No  mention  was  made  of  such 
letters  at  the  period  of  the  trial,  as  it  may  be  called, 
of  Sophia  Dorothea,  and  though  documents,  purport- 
ing to  be  portions  of  this  epistolary  correspondence 
between  Konigsmark  and  the  princess,  have  been 
made  public,  they  are  entirely  unauthenticated,  bear 
neither  date,  name,  nor  address,  and  are,  no  doubt, 
very  poor  forgeries,  which  may  have  been  committed 
by  the  author,  to  try  his  skill,  but  which  could  have 
brought  as  little  profit  to  himself  as  pleasure  to  his 
readers. 

Shortly  after  the  sudden  disappearance  of  the 
count,  his  mother  and  sisters,  residing  at  Hamburg, 
made  application  to  be  put  in  possession  of  some 
property  of  their  deceased  relative,  which  had  been 
deposited  by  him  in  the  hands  of  a  banker  of  that 
city.  The  latter  person,  however,  naturally  enough 
declined  to  surrender  his  trust,  until  sufficient  proof 
had  been  adduced  of  the  death  of  the  alleged  late 
owner  of  the  property.  The  affair  lingered  for  a 


154          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

long  time,  and  its  prosecution  was  productive  of 
some  important  consequences.  In  the  course  of  that 
prosecution,  the  youngest  sister  of  the  count,  the 
Countess  Maria  Aurora,  repaired  to  Dresden  to 
solicit  the  aid  of  the  Elector  of  Saxony,  Frederick 
Augustus,  that  unworthy  prince  who  was  subse- 
quently the  unworthy  King  of  Poland.  The  elector 
was  struck  with  the  beauty  of  his  fair  petitioner,  and 
appears  to  have  driven  a  hard  bargain  with  the  hand- 
some but  not  too  honest  suppliant.  She  became, 
after  a  decent  show  of  resistance,  first  on  the  roll  of 
the  elector's  "favourites,"  and  in  1696  she  gave 
birth  to  that  famous  Maurice  de  Saxe,  who  fought 
so  well,  spelled  so  ill,  and  loved  so  lightly ;  who  pos- 
sessed no  excellence  save  bravery,  was  entirely  desti- 
tute of  all  virtuous  principle,  and  is  the  ancestor 
most  boasted  of  by  his  clever  descendant,  Madame 
"George  Sand." 

From  the  period  of  the  birth  of  Maurice,  the 
Countess  Aurora  fell,  or  rose,  from  the  condition  of 
"  favourite,"  to  that  of  counsellor  and  friend.  Even 
Augustus's  poor  consort  is  said  to  have  looked  with 
something  of  patience  and  even  regard  upon  the  only 
one  of  the  mistresses  of  her  wretched  husband  who 
treated  her  with  respect.  But  what  a  condition  must 
mark  that  household,  wherein  a  neglected  wife  is 
reduced  to  the  degradation  of  feeling  grateful  for 
little  attentions  from  the  hands  of  her  husband's 
mistress !  To  such  degradation  Sophia  Dorothea 
would  never  submit. 

The  Countess  Aurora  had  been  so  triumphant, 
and  yet  so  triumphed  over,  when  a  suppliant  to 
Augustus,  that  the  elector,  in  1702,  when  reduced 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  155 

to  the  most  miserable  extremity  by  the  victorious 
Charles  XII.,  •  despatched  her  upon  the  diplomatic 
mission  of  softening  that  monarch's  not  very  suscep- 
tible heart.  The  ambassadress  was  one  of  those 
women  who  fancy  that  they  can  overcome  any  one 
who,  while  listening  to  their  power  of  tongue,  ven- 
tures to  look  into  their  eyes.  By  magic  of  the  latter, 
and  of  speech  made  up  of  very  persuasive  argu- 
ments, Aurora  fondly  hoped  to  touch  the  sensibili- 
ties that  were  supposed  to  be  buttoned  up  beneath 
the  unbrushed  coat  of  the  stoical  Charles.  The 
latter,  distrusting  his  own  possible  weakness,  and 
dreading  the  lady's  united  powers,  showed  himself 
a  true  hero  by  avoiding  the  temptation  thrown  in  his 
way,  and  when  the  countess  solicited  an  audience  he 
stoutly  refused  to  see  her.  "  Well !  "  remarked  the 
blushing  Aurora,  striving  at  the  same  time  to  wreathe 
the  blush  of  vexation  with  the  sunniest  of  her  smiles, 
"  I  am  the  only  person  on  whom  the  King  of  Sweden 
ever  turned  his  back  !  " 

This  want  of  diplomatic  success  laid  her  more 
open  than  she  had  ever  been  before  to  the  intrigues 
of  her  more  brazen  but  less  intellectual  rivals ;  and 
Maria  Aurora  was  dismissed  from  the  court  of  her 
so-called  "protector."  It  is  good  that  vice  should 
be  exposed  to  such  downfall,  and  that  women  who, 
like  the  lovely  Aurora,  can  plead  guilty  to  but  a 
single  fault,  should  be  subject  to  a  treatment  which 
is  severe  discipline  to  themselves,  and  profitable 
example  —  if  their  sisters  would  but  only  condescend 
to  benefit  by  it. 

Aurora  in  her  retirement  more  nearly  resembled 
Madame  de  la  Valliere  than  Heloise.  She  proved 


156  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

a  noble  mother  to  her  superb  and  graceless  son,  and 
she  did  not  pass  her  time  in  the  -composition  of 
ardent  epistolary  reminiscences  of  guilty  pleasures, 
wherein  the  expressed  contempt  for  bygone  dear 
delights  cannot  conceal  the  writer's  regret  that  they 
were  no  longer  to  be  enjoyed.  Aurora  finally  retired 
to  the  Protestant  Abbey  of  Quedlinburg,  in  what 
then  was  Lower  Saxony,  and  beguiled  her  long 
leisure  hours  by  meditations,  that  would  do  honour 
to  Krumacher,  and  by  hymns,  far  more  spiritual  and 
sensible  than  those  heavenly  songs  of  the  quietist 
Madame  Guyon,  and  which  read  so  very  much  like 
sprightly  strains  "  writ "  by  Dan  Prior,  and  "  set " 
by  mellifluous  Travers. 

The  ladies  of  the  abbey  still  exhibit,  with  author- 
ised pride,  the  manuscript  collection  of  psalms  and 
hymns,  the  composition  of  which  shows  that  their 
authoress  had  warmer  love  for  Heaven  than  she 
ever  had  for  man. 

Her  position  here  was  one  in  .which  a  weaker 
nature  and  a  less  sincere  person  would  have  been 
liable  to  be  surrendered  to  the  exercise  of  much 
worldly  pride.  Quedlinburg,  on  the  Bode,  now  in 
Prussia,  was  an  imperial  free  city,  in  which  emperors 
had  kept  their  state,  the  Church  held  councils,  and 
the  city  imprisoned  its  counts  in  oaken  cages.  The 
nunnery  of  the  abbey  was  founded  by  Matilda, 
the  wife  of  the  Emperor  Henry  the  Fowler.  The 
abbesses  resided  in  the  castle,  which  dominates 
above  the  town,  and  originally  they  were  ex-officio 
princesses  of  the  empire,  independent  of  all  spiritual 
sovereignty  save  that  of  the  Pope,  possessors  of  a 
vote  in  the  Diet,  and  a  seat  on  the  bench  of  Rhenish 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  157 

bishops.  The  entire  town,  including  all  the  convents, 
nunneries,  and  adjacent  extensive  domains,  belonged 
to  the  abbess,  who  counted  among  her  vassals  as 
many  nobles  of  high  rank  as,  among  her  nuns,  ladies 
of  royal  and  noble  birth.  When  Aurora  of  Konigs- 
mark  became  prioress  of  the  community,  the  old 
splendour  had  been  somewhat  diminished,  and  what 
was  left  was  a  trifle  tarnished,  too.  The  feudal  sov- 
ereignty departed  from  it  at  the  Reformation,  when 
the  abbess  adopted  the  Lutheran  faith  and  lost  the 
greater  part  of  the  abbey  estates.  Still,  in  Aurora's 
time  much  of  splendour  was  left ;  its  last  spark 
went  out  in  1802,  when  the  King  of  Prussia  seques- 
trated the  convent,  and  converted  it,  in  part,  into 
a  school. 

Had  Aurora  been  a  weak  woman,  her  pride  would 
have  lived  here  with  her  beauty ;  the  former  died 
early,  the  latter  lived  with  her  to  the  end.  She  was 
superb,  even  throughout  her  declining  life,  and  when 
she  died,  in  1725,  there  passed  away  to  her  account 
a  woman,  not  without  sin,  but  also  not  without  a 
sincere  repentance. 

Reader,  and  especially  young  reader,  —  if  thou 
shouldst  ever  visit  Quedlinburg,  you  may  see  there  a 
better  sermon  than  thou  art  likely  to  hear.  Descend 
with  the  good-natured  and  willing  sexton  into  the 
vault  below  the  Stiff er  Kirche.  On  the  right  side 
of  the  vault  there  is  a  coffin,  the  lid  of  which  he  will 
remove  with  a  singular  alacrity.  Look  into  it,  and 
learn  from  what  thou  lookest  on.  That  poor  brown, 
dusty  mummy  is  all  that  remains  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful woman  of  her  time.  That  wretched  but  sug- 
gestive ruin  once  tabernacled  the  "  immortal  spark  " 


158  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

which  yet  lives,  —  but  where  ?     There  is  a  sermon 
in  the  sight,  and  deep  instruction  in  the  thought. 

We  must  leave  both,  however,  to  turn  to  another 
lady  who,  as  it  is  believed,  sinned  less,  but  suffered 
longer. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

PRISON    AND    PALACE 

The  Prison  of  the  Captive  Sophia  Dorothea  —  Employment  of  Her 
Time  —  The  Church  of  Ahlden  Repaired  by  Her  —  Cut  Off  from 
Her  Children  —  Sympathy  of  Ernest  Augustus  for  His  Daughter- 
in-law —  Her  Father's  Returning  Affection  for  Her  —  Opening 
Prospects  of  the  House  of  Hanover  —  Lord  Macclesfield's  Em- 
bassy to  Hanover,  and  His  Right  Royal  Reception  —  Description 
of  the  Electress  —  Toland's  Description  of  Prince  George  Louis 

—  Magnificent   Present    to   Lord    Macclesfield  —  The   Princess 
Sophia  and  the  English  Liturgy  —  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Zell 

—  Visit  of  Prince  George  to  His  Captive  Mother  Prevented. 

THE  castle  of  Ahlden  is  situated  on  the  small  and 
sluggish  stream,  the  Aller ;  and  seems  to  guard,  as 
it  once  oppressed,  the  little  village  sloping  at  its  feet. 
This  edifice  was  appointed  as  the  prison-place  of 
Sophia  Dorothea;  and  from  the  territory  she  ac- 
quired a  title,  that  of  Duchess  of  Ahlden.  She  was 
mockingly  called  sovereign  lady  of  a  locality  where 
all  were  free  but  herself ! 

On  looking  over  the  list  of  the  household  which 
was  formed  for  the  service  —  if  the  phrase  be  one 
that  may  be  admitted  —  of  her  captivity,  the  first 
thing  which  strikes  us  as  singular  is  the  presence 
of  "three  cooks,"  —  a  triad  of  "ministers  of  the 
mouth"  for  one  poor  imprisoned  lady! 

The  singularity  vanishes  when  we  find  that  around 
this  encaged  duchess  there  circled  a  really  extensive 


160  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

household,  and  there  lived  a  world  of  ceremony,  of 
which  no  one  was  so  much  the  slave  as  she  was. 
Her  captivity  in  its  commencement  was  decked 
with  a  certain  sort  of  splendour,  —  about  which  she, 
who  was  its  object,  cared  by  far  the  least.  There 
was  a  military  governor  of  the  castle,  gentlemen  and 
ladies  in  waiting,  —  spies  all.  Among  the  honester 
servants  of  the  house  were  a  brace  of  pages,  and  as 
many  valets,  a  dozen  female  domestics,  and  fourteen 
footmen,  who  had  to  undergo  the  intense  labour  of 
doing  very  little  in  a  very  lengthened  space  of  time. 
To  supply  the  material  wants  of  these,  the  three 
cooks,  one  confectioner,  a  baker,  and  a  butler  were 
provided.  There  was,  besides,  a  military  force,  con- 
sisting of  infantry  and  artillery.  It  must  have  cost 
the  governor  as  little  trouble  and  as  much  pride  to 
manoeuvre  as  the  army  of  Thraso  cost  that  valiant 
captain,  when  he  laid  such  glorious  siege  to  the 
strong  fortress  of  that  exemplary  lady,  Thais,  in 
order  to  recover  Pamphila.  Altogether,  there  must 
have  been  work  enough  for  the  three  cooks. 

The  forms  of  a  court  were  long  maintained,  al- 
though only  on  a  small  scale.  The  duchess  held 
her  little  Iev6es,  and  the  local  authorities,  clergy, 
and  neighbouring  nobility  and  gentry  offered  her 
such  respect  as  could  be  manifested  by  paying  her 
visits  on  certain  appointed  days.  These  visits,  how- 
ever, were  always  narrowly  watched  by  the  officials, 
whose  office  lay  in  such  service,  and  was  hid  beneath 
a  show  of  duty. 

The  successive  governors  of  the  castle  were  men 
of  note,  and  their  presence  betokened  the  importance 
attached  to  the  person  and  safe-keeping  of  the  cap- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  161 

tive.  During  the  first  three  years  of  her  imprison- 
ment, the  post  of  governor  was  held  by  the  Hof 
Grand  Marshal  von  Bothmar.  He  was  succeeded  by 
the  Count  Bergest,  who  enjoyed  his  equivocal  dignity 
of  gaoler-governor  about  a  quarter  of  a  century. 
During  the  concluding  years  of  the  imprisonment 
of  Sophia,  her  seneschal  was  a  relative  of  one  of 
her  judges,  Georg  von  Busche. 

These  men  behaved  to  their  prisoner  with  as  much 
courtesy  as  they  dared  to  show ;  nor  was  her  captiv- 
ity severe  in  anything  but  the  actual  deprivation  of 
liberty,  and  of  all  intercourse  with  those  she  best 
loved,  until  after  the  first  few  years.  The  escape 
of  Mile.  Knesebeck  from  her  place  of  confinement 
appears  to  have  given  the  husband  of  Sophia  Doro- 
thea an  affectionate  uneasiness,  which  he  evidenced 
by  giving  orders  that  his  wife's  safe-keeping  should 
be  maintained  with  greater  stringency. 

From  the  day  of  the  issuing  of  that  order,  she  was 
never  allowed  to  walk,  even  in  the  garden  of  the 
castle,  without  a  guard.  She  never  rode  out,  or 
drove  through  the  neighbouring  woods,  without  a 
strong  escort.  Even  parts  of  the  castle  were  pro- 
hibited from  being  intruded  upon  by  her ;  and  so 
much  severity  was  shown  in  this  respect  that  when, 
on  one  occasion,  a  fire  broke  out  in  the  edifice,  to 
escape  from  which  she  must  have  traversed  a  gal- 
lery which  she  was  forbidden  to  pass,  she  stood  short 
of  the  proscribed  limit,  her  jewel-box  in  her  arms, 
and  herself  in  almost  speechless  terror,  but  refusing 
to  advance  beyond  the  prohibited  line,  until  permis- 
sion reached  her  from  the  proper  authority. 

On  such  a  prisoner  time  must  have  hung  espe- 


1 62  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

cially  heavy.  She  had,  however,  many  resources, 
and  every  hour,  with  her,  had  its  occupation.  She 
was  the  land-steward  of  her  little  ducal  estate,  and 
performed  all  the  duties  of  that  office.  She  kept  a 
diary  of  her  thoughts  as  well  as  actions ;  and  if  this 
be  extant,  it  would  be  well  worthy  of  being  published. 
Her  correspondence,  during  the  period  she  was  per- 
mitted to  write,  was  extensive.  Every  day  she  had 
interviews  with,  and  gave  instructions  to,  each  of  her 
servants,  from  the  chief  of  the  three  cooks  down- 
ward. With  this,  she  was  as  personally  active  in 
charity  as  the  good  Duke  de  Penthievre  and  his 
secretary,  Florian,  whose  very  sport  it  was  to  vie 
with  each  other  in  discovering  the  greater  number 
of  objects  worthy  of  being  relieved.  Finally,  she 
was  the  Lady  Bountiful  of  the  district,  laying  out 
half  her  income  in  charitable  uses  for  the  good  of 
her  neighbours,  and,  as  Boniface  said  of  the  good 
lady  of  Lichfield,  "curing  more  people  in  and  about 
the  place  within  ten  years  than  the  doctors  had  killed 
in  twenty,  and  that's  a  bold  word."  Of  George  Louis 
it  may  be  said  what  Cherry's  thirsty  father  said  of 
Lady  Bountiful's  son,  Squire  Sullen,  "that  he  was 
a  man  of  a  great  estate,  who  valued  nobody." 

There  was  a  church  in  the  village,  which  was 
in  rather  ruinous  condition  when  her  captivity  com- 
menced, but  this  she  put  in  thorough  repair,  dec- 
orated it  handsomely,  presented  it  with  an  organ, 
and  was  refused  permission  to  attend  there  after 
it  had  been  reopened  for  public  service.  For  her 
religious  consolation,  a  chaplain  had  been  provided, 
and  she  was  never  trusted,  even  under  guard,  to  join 
with  the  villagers  in  common  worship  in  the  church 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  163 

of  the  village  below.  In  this  respect,  a  somewhat 
royal  etiquette  was  observed.  The  chaplain  read 
prayers  to  the  garrison  and  household  in  one  room, 
to  which  the  princess  and  her  ladies  listened  rather 
than  therewith  joined,  placed  as  they  were  in  an 
adjacent  room,  where  they  could  hear  without  being 
seen. 

With  no  relative  was  she  allowed  to  hold  never 
so  brief  an  interview  ;  and  not  even  her  mother  was 
permitted  to  soften  by  her  presence  for  an  hour  the 
rigid  and  ceremonious  captivity  of  her  luckless  daugh- 
ter. Mother  and  child  were  allowed  to  correspond 
at  stated  periods,  their  letters  passing  open  ;  but  the 
princess  herself  was  as  much  cut  off  from  her  own 
children,  as  if  these  had  been  dead  and  entombed. 
The  little  prince  and  princess  were  expressly  ordered 
to  utterly  forget  that  they  had  a  mother,  —  her  very 
name  on  their  lips  would  have  been  condemned  as  a 
grievous  fault.  The  boy,  George  Augustus,  was  in 
many  points  of  character  similar  to  his  father,  and, 
accordingly,  being  commanded  to  forget  his  mother, 
he  obstinately  bore  her  in  memory ;  and  when  he 
was  told  that  he  would  never  have  an  opportunity 
afforded  him  to  see  her,  mentally  resolved  to  make 
one  for  himself. 

It  is  but  justice  to  the  old  elector  to  say  that 
in  his  advanced  years,  when  pleasant  sins  were  no 
longer  profitable  to  him,  he  gave  them  up;  and 
when  the  youngest  of  his  mistresses  had  ceased 
to  be  attractive,  he  began  to  think  such  appendages 
little  worth  the  hanging  on  to  his  electoral  dignity. 
For,  ceasing  to  love  and  live  with  his  "  favourites," 
he  did  not  the  more  respect,  or  hold  closer  inter- 


1 64          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

course  with,  his  wife,  —  a  course  about  which  the 
Electress  Sophia  troubled  herself  very  little.  The 
elector,  in  short,  was  very  much  like  the  gentleman 
in  the  epigram,  who  said  : 

"  I've  lost  my  mistress,  horse,  and  wife, 
And  when  I  think  on  human  life, 

'Tis  well  that  it's  no  worse ! 
My  mistress  had  grown  lean  and  old, 
My  wife  was  ugly  and  a  scold ;  — 

I'm  sorry  for  my  horse !  " 

In  his  later  days,  Ernest  Augustus,  having  little 
regard  for  his  wife  or  favourites,  began  to  have  much 
for  the  good  things  of  the  earth,  a  superabundance  of 
which,  as  Johnson  reminded  Garrick,  made  death  so 
terrible.  When  he  ceased  to  be  under  the  influence 
of  the  disgraced  Countess  von  Platen,  he  began  to  be 
sensible  of  some  sympathy  for  his  daughter-in-law, 
Sophia.  He  softened  in  some  degree  the  rigour  of 
her  imprisonment,  and  corresponded  with  her  by 
letter ;  a  correspondence  which  inspired  her  with 
hope  that  her  freedom  might  result  from  it.  This 
hope  was,  however,  frustrated  by  the  death  of  Ernest 
Augustus,  on  the  2Oth  of  January,  1698.  From  that 
time,  the  rigour  of  her  imprisonment  was  increased 
fourfold. 

If  the  heart  of  her  old  father-in-law  began  to  in- 
cline toward  her  as  he  increased  in  years,  it  is  not  to 
be  wondered  at  that  the  heart  of  her  aged  father 
melted  toward  her  as  time  began  to  press  heavily 
upon  him.  But  it  was  the  weakest  of  hearts  allied 
to  the  weakest  of  minds.  In  the  comfortlessness  of 
his  great  age,  he  sought  to  be  comforted  by  loving 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  165 

her  whom  he  had  insanely  and  unnaturally  oppressed 
—  the  sole  child  of  his  heart  and  house.  In  his 
weakness  he  addressed  himself  to  that  tool  of  Han- 
over at  Zell,  the  minister  Bernstorf ;  and  that  indi- 
vidual so  terrified  the  poor  old  man  by  details  of  the 
ill  consequences  which  might  ensue  if  the  wrath  of 
the  new  elector,  George  Louis,  were  aroused  by  the 
interference  of  the  Duke  of  Zell,  in  matters  which 
concerned  the  elector  and  his  wife,  that  the  old  man, 
feeble  in  mind  and  body,  yielded,  and  for  a  time  at 
least  left  his  daughter  to  her  fate.  He  thought  to 
compensate  for  the  wrong  which  he  inflicted  on  her 
under  the  impulse  of  his  evil  genius,  Bernstorf,  by 
adding  a  codicil  to  his  will,  wherein  the  name  of  his 
daughter  is  mentioned  with  an  implied  love  which 
reminds  one  of  the  "  and  Peter,"  after  the  denial, 
and  which  told  the  other  Apostles  that  love  divine 
had  not  perished  because  of  one  poor  mortal  offence. 

By  this  codicil  he  bequeathed  to  the  daughter 
whom  he  had  wronged,  all  that  it  was  in  his  power 
to  leave,  in  jewels,  monies,  and  lands ;  but  liberty  he 
could  not  give  her,  and  so  his  love  could  do  little 
more  than  try  to  lighten  the  fetters  which  he  had 
aided  to  put  on.  But  there  was  a  short-lived  joy  in 
store,  both  for  child  and  parents.  The  fetters  were 
to  be  cast  aside  for  a  brief  season,  and  the  poor  cap- 
tive was  to  enjoy  an  hour  of  home,  of  love,  and  of 
liberty. 

The  last  year  of  the  seventeenth  century  (1700) 
brought  with  it  an  accession  of  greatness  to  the 
electoral  family  of  Hanover,  inasmuch  as  in  that 
year  a  bill  was  introduced  into  Parliament,  and  ac- 
cepted by  that  body,  which  fixed  the  succession  to 


1 66  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  crown  of  England  after  the  Princess  Anne,  and 
in  default  of  such  princess  dying  without  heirs  of  her 
own  body,  in  the  person  of  Sophia  of  Hanover. 
William  III.  had  been  very  desirous  for  the  intro- 
duction of  this  bill,  but  under  various  pretexts  it  had 
been  deferred,  the  commonest  business  being  allowed 
to  take  precedence  of  it,  until  the  century  had  nearly 
expired.  The  limitations  to  the  royal  action,  which 
formed  a  part  of  the  bill  as  recommended  in  the 
report  of  the  committee,  were  little  to  the  king's 
taste ;  for  they  not  only  affected  his  employment  of 
foreign  troops  in  England,  but  shackled  his  own  free 
and  frequent  departures  from  the  kingdom.  It  was 
imagined  by  many  that  these  limitations  were  de- 
signed by  the  leaders  in  the  cabinet,  in  order  to  raise 
disputes  between  the  two  houses,  by  which  the  bill 
might  be  lost.  Such  is  Burnet's  report,  and  he  sar- 
castically adds  thereto,  that  when  much  time  had 
been  spent  in  preliminaries,  and  it  was  necessary  to 
come  to  the  nomination  of  the  person  who  should  be 
named  presumptive  heir  next  to  Queen  Anne,  the 
office  of  doing  so  was  confided  to  "  Sir  John  Bowles, 
who  was  then  disordered  in  his  senses,  and  soon  after 
quite  lost  them."  "  He  was,"  says  Burnet,  "  set  on 
by  the  party  to  be  the  first  that  should  name  the 
Electress  Dowager  of  Brunswick,  which  seemed  done 
to  make  it  less  serious  when  moved  by  such  a 
person."  So  that  the  solemn  question  of  naming 
the  heir  to  a  throne  was  entrusted  to  an  idiot,  who, 
by  the  forms  of  the  House,  was  appointed  chairman 
of  the  committee  for  the  conduct  of  the  bill.  Burnet 
adds,  that  the  "  thing,"  as  he  calls  it,  was  "  still  put 
off  for  many  weeks  at  every  time  that  it  was  called 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  167 

for ;  the  motion  was  entertained  with  coldness,  which 
served  to  heighten  the  jealousy;  the  committee  once 
or  twice  sat  upon  it;  but  all  the  members  ran  out  of 
the  House  with  so  much  indecency,  that  the  contrivers 
seemed  ashamed  of  this  management ;  there  were 
seldom  fifty  or  sixty  at  the  committee,  yet  in  conclu- 
sion it  passed,  and  was  sent  up  to  the  lords."  Great 
opposition  was  expected  from  the  peers,  and  many  of 
their  lordships  designedly  absented  themselves  from 
the  discussion.  The  opposition  was  slight,  and  con- 
fined to  the  Marquis  of  Normanby,  who  spoke,  and 
the  Lords  Huntingdon,  Plymouth,  Guildford,  and 
Jefferies,  who  protested,  against  the  bill.  Burnet 
affirms,  that  those  who  wished  well  to  the  act  were 
glad  to  have  it  passed  any  way,  and  so  would  not 
examine  the  limitations  that  fwere  in  it,  and  which 
they  thought  might  be  considered  afterward.  "  We 
reckoned  it,"  says  Burnet,  "  a  great  point  carried  that 
we  had  now  a  law  on  our  side  for  a  Protestant  suc- 
cessor." The  law  was  stoutly  protested  against  by  the 
Duchess  of  Savoy,  granddaughter  of  Charles  I.  The 
protest  did  not  trouble  the  king,  who  despatched  the 
act  to  the  electress  dowager,  and  the  Garter  to  her 
son,  by  the  hands  of  the  Earl  of  Macclesfield. 

The  earl  was  a  fitting  bearer  of  so  costly  and  sig- 
nificant a  present.  He  had  been  attached  to  the 
service  of  the  mother  of  Sophia,  and  was  highly 
esteemed  by  the  electress  dowager  herself.  The 
earl  had  no  especial  commission  beyond  that  which 
enjoined  him  to  deliver  the  act,  nor  was  he  dignified 
by  any  official  appellation.  He  was  neither  ambassa- 
dor, legate,  plenipotentiary,  nor  envoy.  He  had  with 
him,  however,  a  most  splendid  suite ;  which  was  in 


1 68  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

some  respects  strangely  constituted,  for  among  its 
members  was  the  famous,  or  infamous,  Janius  Junius 
Toland,  whose  book  in  support  of  rationality  as 
applied  to  religion,  and  in  denial  that  there  was 
any  mystery  whatever  in  the  Christian  dispensation, 
had  been  publicly  burnt  by  the  hangman,  in  Ireland. 

The  welcome. of  this  body  of  gentlemen  was  right 
royal.  It  may  be  said  that  the  electoral  family  had 
neither  cared  for  the  dignity  now  rendered  probable 
for  them,  nor  in  any  way  toiled  or  intrigued  to  bring 
it  within  their  grasp ;  but  it  is  certain  that  their  joy 
was  great,  when  the  Earl  of  Macclesfield  appeared  on 
the  frontier  of  the  electorate  with  the  act  in  one  hand 
and  the  Garter  in  the  other.  He  and  his  suite  were 
met  there  with  a  welcome  of  extraordinary  magnifi- 
cence, betokening  ample  appreciation  of  the  double 
gift  he  brought  with  him.  He  himself  seemed  ele- 
vated by  his  mission,  for  he  was  in  his  general 
deportment  little  distinguished  by  courtly  manners 
or  by  ceremonious  bearing;  but  it  was  observed 
that,  on  this  occasion,  nothing  could  have  been  more 
becoming  than  the  way  in  which  he  acquitted  himself 
of  an  office  which  brought  a  whole  family  within  view 
of  succession  to  a  royal  and  powerful  throne. 

On  reaching  the  confines  of  the  electorate,  the 
members  of  the  deputation  from  England  were  re- 
ceived by  personages  of  the  highest  official  rank, 
who  not  only  escorted  them  to  the  capital,  but 
treated  them  on  the  way  with  a  liberality  so  profuse 
as  to  be  the  wonder  of  all  beholders.  They  were  not 
allowed  to  disburse  a  farthing  from  their  own  purses  ; 
all  they  thought  fit  to  order  was  paid  for  by  the 
electoral  government,  by  whose  orders  they  were 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  169 

lodged  in  the  most  commodious  palace  in  Hanover, 
where  as  much  homage  was  paid  them  as  if  each  man 
had  been  a  Kaiser  in  his  own  person.  The  Hano- 
verian gratitude  went  so  far,  that  not  only  were  the 
ambassador  and  suite  treated  as  favoured  guests,  and 
that  not  alone  of  the  princess  but  of  the  people,  — 
the  latter  being  commanded  to  refrain  from  taking 
payment  from  any  of  them,  for  any  article  of  refresh- 
ment they  required,  —  but  for  many  days  all  English 
travellers  visiting  the  city  were  made  equally  free  of 
its  caravansaries,  and  were  permitted  to  enjoy  all 
that  the  inns  could  afford,  without  being  required  to 
pay  for  the  enjoyment. 

The  delicate  treatment  of  the  electoral  government 
extended  even  to  the  servants  of  the  earl  and  his 
suite.  It  was  thought  that  to  require  them  to  dine 
upon  the  fragments  of  their  master's  banquets  would 
be  derogatory  to  the  splendour  of  the  hospitality  of 
the  house  of  Hanover,  and  an  insult  to  the  domestics 
who  followed  in  the  train  of  the  earl.  The  govern- 
ment accordingly  disbursed  half  a  crown  a  day  to  the 
liveried  followers,  and  considered  such  a  "composi- 
tion "  as  glorious  to  the  reputation  of  the  electoral 
house.  The  menials  were  even  emancipated  from 
service  during  the  sojourn  of  the  deputation  in 
Hanover,  and  the  elector's  numerous  servants  waited 
upon  the  English  visitors,  zealously  throughout  the 
day,  but  with  most  splendour  hi  the  morning,  when 
they  were  to  be  seen  hurrying  to  the  bedrooms  of 
the  different  members  of  the  suite,  bearing  with 
them  silver  coffee  and  tea  pots,  and  other  requisites 
for  breakfast,  which  meal  appears  to  have  been  lazily 
indulged  in,  as  if  the  legation  had  been  habitually 


1 70  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

wont  to  "  make  a  night  of  it,"  —  in  bed.  And  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  hard  drinking  on  these  occasions, 
but  all  at  the  expense  of  the  husband  of  Sophia 
Dorothea,  who,  in  her  castle  of  Ahlden,  was  not 
even  aware  of  that  increase  of  honour  which  had 
fallen  upon  her  consort,  and  in  which  she  had  a  right 
to  share. 

For  those  who  were,  the  next  day,  ill  or  indolent, 
there  were  the  ponderous  state  coaches  to  carry  them 
whithersoever  they  would  go.  The  most  gorgeous  of 
the  fetes  given  on  this  occasion,  was  on  the  evening 
of  the  day  on  which  the  act  was  solemnly  presented 
to  the  electress  dowager.  Hanover,  famous  as  it  was 
for  its  balls,  had  never  seen  so  glorious  a  Terpsicho- 
rean  festival  as  marked  this  particular  night.  At  the 
balls  in  the  old  elector's  time,  Sophia  Dorothea  used 
to  shine,  first  in  beauty  and  in  grace,  but  now  her  place 
was  ill  supplied  by  the  not  fair  and  quite  graceless 
Mile,  von  Schulemberg.  The  supper  which  followed 
was  Olympian  in  its  profusion,  wit,  and  magnificence. 
This  was  at  a  time  when  to  be  sober  was  to  be 
respectable,  but  when  to  be  drunk  was  not  to 
be  ungentlemanly.  Consequently  we  find  Toland, 
who  wrote  an  account  of  the  achievements  of  the 
day,  congratulating  himself  and  readers  by  stating 
that,  although  it  was  to  be  expected  that  in  so  large 
and  so  jovial  a  party  some  would  be  found  even  more 
ecstatic  than  the  occasion  and  the  company  war- 
ranted, yet  that,  in  truth,  the  number  of  those  who 
were  guilty  of  excess  was  but  small.  Even  Lord 
Mohun  kept  himself  sober,  and  to  the  end  was  able 
to  converse  as  clearly  and  intelligibly  as  Lord  Saye 
and  Sele,  and  his  friend  "my  Lord  Tunbridge." 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  171 

With  what  degree  of  lucidity  these  noble  gentlemen 
talked,  we  are  not  told,  so  that  we  can  hardly  judge 
of  the  measure  of  Lord  Mohun's  sobriety.  That  he 
was  not  very  drunk,  seems  to  Toland  a  thing  to  be 
thankful  for,  seeing  that  it  had  long  been  his  custom 
to  be  so,  until  of  late,  when  he  had  delighted  the 
prudent  by  forswearing  sack  and  living  cleanly. 

This  day  of  presentation  of  the  act,  and  of  the 
festival  in  honour  of  it,  was  one  of  the  greatest  days 
which  Hanover  had  ever  seen.  Every  one  wore  a 
face  of  joy,  at  least  so  we  collect  from  Toland's 
description  of  what  he  saw,  and  from  which  descrip- 
tion we  cull  a  few  paragraphs  by  way  of  picture  of 
scene  and  players.  Speaking  of  the  mother-in-law 
of  Sophia  Dorothea,  he  says :  "The  electress  is 
three  and  seventy  years  old,  which  she  bears  so 
wonderfully  well,  that  had  I  not  many  vouchers, 
I  should  scarce  dare  venture  to  relate  it.  She  has 
ever  enjoyed  extraordinary  health,  which  keeps  her 
still  very  vigorous,  of  a  cheerful  countenance,  and  a 
merry  disposition.  She  steps  as  firm  and  erect  as 
any  young  lady,  has  not  one  wrinkle  in  her  face, 
which  is  still  very  agreeable,  nor  one  tooth  out  of  her 
head,  and  reads  without  spectacles,  as  I  have  often 
seen  her  do,  letters  of  a  small  character,  in  the  dusk 
of  the  evening.  She  is  as  great  a  writer  as  our  late 
queen  (Mary),  and  you  cannot  turn  yourself  in  the 
palace,  without  meeting  some  monument  of  her  indus- 
try, all  the  chairs  of  the  presence-chamber  being 
wrought  with  her  own  hands.  The  ornaments  of  the 
altar  in  the  electoral  chapel  are  all  of  her  work.  She 
bestowed  the  same  favour  on  the  Protestant  abbey, 
or  college,  of  Lockurn,  with  a  thousand  other  in- 


172  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

stances,  fitter  for  your  lady  to  know  than  for  your- 
self. She  is  the  most  constant  and  greatest  walker 
I  ever  knew,  never  missing  a  day,  if  it  proves  fair, 
for  one  or  two  hours  and  often  more,  in  the  fine 
garden  at  Herrnhausen.  She  perfectly  tires  all 
those  of  her  court  who  attend  her  in  that  exercise, 
but  such  as  have  the  honour  to  be  entertained  by  her 
in  discourse.  She  has  been  long  admired  by  all  the 
learned  world  as  a  woman  of  incomparable  knowledge 
in  divinity,  philosophy,  history,  and  the  subjects  of 
all  sorts  of  books,  of  which  she  has  read  a  prodigious 
quantity.  She  speaks  five  languages  so  well,  that  by 
her  accent  it  might  be  a  dispute  which  of  them  was 
her  first.  They  are  Low  Dutch,  German,  French, 
Italian,  and  English,  which  last  she  speaks  as  truly 
and  easily  as  any  native  ;  which  to  me  is  a  matter  of 
amazement,  whatever  advantages  she  might  have  in 
her  youth  by  the  conversation  of  her  mother;  for 
though  the  late  king's  (William's)  mother  was  like- 
wise an  Englishwoman,  of  the  same  royal  family, 
though  he  had  been  more  than  once  in  England 
before  the  Revolution  ;  though  he  was  married  there, 
and  his  court  continually  full  of  many  of  that  nation, 
yet  he  could  never  conquer  his  foreign  accent.  But, 
indeed,  the  electress  is  so  entirely  English  in  her 
person,  in  her  behaviour,  in  her  humour,  and  in  all 
her  inclinations,  that  naturally  she  could  not  miss  of 
anything  that  peculiarly  belongs  to  our  land.  She 
was  ever  glad  to  see  Englishmen,  long  before  the  Act 
of  Succession.  She  professes  to  admire  our  form  of 
government,  and  understands  it  mighty  well,  yet  she 
asks  so  many  questions  about  families,  customs,  laws, 
and  the  like,  as  sufficiently  demonstrate  her  profound 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  173 

wisdom  and  experience.  She  has  a  deep  veneration 
for  the  Church  of  England,  without  losing  affection 
or  charity  for  any  other  sort  of  Protestants,  and 
appears  charmed  with  the  moderate  temper  of  our 
present  bishops  and  other  of  our  learned  clergy,  espe- 
cially for  their  approbation  of  the  liberty  allowed  by 
law  to  Protestant  Dissenters.  She  is  adored  for  her 
goodness  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  country,  and 
gains  the  hearts  of  all  strangers  by  her  unparallelled 
affability.  No  distinction  is  ever  made  in  her  court 
concerning  the  parties  into  which  Englishmen  are 
divided,  and  whereof  they  carry  the  effects  and 
impressions  with  them  whithersoever  they  go,  which 
makes  others  sometimes  uneasy  as  well  as  them- 
selves. There  it  is  enough  that  you  are  an  English- 
man, nor  can  you  ever  discover  by  your  treatment 
which  are  better  liked,  the  Whigs  or  the  Tories. 
These  are  the  instructions  given  to  all  the  servants, 
and  they  take  care  to  execute  them  with  the  utmost 
exactness.  I  was  the  first  who  had  the  honour  of 
kneeling  and  kissing  her  hand  on  account  of  the  Act 
of  Succession ;  and  she  said  among  other  discourse, 
that  she  was  afraid  the  nation  had  already  repented 
their  choice  of  an  old  woman,  but  that  she  hoped 
none  of  her  posterity  would  give  her  any  reasons  to 
grow  weary  of  their  dominion.  I  answered,  that  the 
English  had  too  well  considered  what  they  did,  to 
change  their  minds  so  soon,  and  they  still  remem- 
bered they  were  never  so  happy  as  when  they  were 
last  under  a  woman's  government.  Since  that  time, 
sir,"  adds  the  courtly  but  unorthodox  Toland  to  the 
"  Minister  of  State  in  Holland,"  to  whom  his  letter 
is  addressed,  "we  have  a  further  confirmation  of 


174          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

this  truth  by  the  glorious  administration  of  Queen 
Anne." 

Such  is  a  picture,  rather  "loaded,"  as  an  artist 
might  say,  of  the  mother-in-law  of  the  prisoner  of 
Ahlden.  The  record  would  be  imperfect  if  it  were 
not  accompanied  by  another  "counterfeit  present- 
ment," that  of  her  son. 

At  the  period  when  Toland  accompanied  the  Earl 
of  Macclesfield  to  Hanover,  with  the  Act  of  Succes- 
sion, the  most  important  personage  at  that  court, 
next  to  the  electress,  the  Regina  designata  Britan- 
niarum,  was  her  son,  Prince  George  Louis,  the 
husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea.  Toland  describes 
him  as  "a  proper,  middle-sized,  well-proportioned 
man,  of  a  genteel  address,  and  good  appearance ; " 
but  he  adds  that  his  Highness  "is  reserved,  and 
therefore  speaks  little,  but  judiciously."  George 
Louis,  like  "  Monseigneur "  at  Versailles,  cared  for 
nothing  but  hunting.  "He  is  not  to  be  exceeded," 
says  Toland,  "in  his  zeal  against  the  intended  uni- 
versal monarchy  of  France,  and  so  is  most  hearty 
for  the  common  cause  of  Europe,"  for  the  very  good 
reason,  that  therein  "his  own  is  so  necessarily  in- 
volved." Toland,  in  the  humour  to  praise  everything, 
adds,  that  George  Louis  understood  the  constitution 
of  England  better  than  any  "  foreigner  "  he  had  ever 
met  with ;  a  very  safe  remark,  for  our  constitution 
was  ill  understood  abroad ;  and  even  had  the  theoret- 
ical knowledge  of  George  Louis  been  ever  so  correct, 
his  practice  with  our  constitution  betrayed  such  igno- 
rance that  Toland' s  assertion  may  be  taken  only 
quantum  valuit,  for  what  it  is  worth.  "Though," 
says  the  writer  just  named,  "  though  he  be  well  versed 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  175 

in  the  art  of  war,  and  of  invincible  courage,  having 
often  exposed  his  person  to  great  dangers  in  Hun- 
gary, in  the  Morea,  on  the  Rhine,  and  in  Flanders, 
yet  he  is  naturally  of  peaceable  inclination ;  which 
mixture  of  qualities  is  agreed,  by  the  experience  of 
all  ages,  to  make  the  best  and  most  glorious  princes. 
He  is  a  perfect  man  of  business,  exactly  regular  in 
the  economy  of  his  revenues  "  (which  he  never  was 
of  those  of  England,  seeing  that  he  outran  his  liberal 
allowance,  and  coolly  asked  the  Parliament  to  pay  his 
debts),  "reads  all  despatches  himself  at  first  hand, 
writes  most  of  his  own  letters,  and  spends  a  consider- 
able part  of  his  time  about  such  occupations,  in  his 
closet,  and  with  his  ministers." 

Toland,  however,  was  afraid  he  had  not  sufficiently 
gilded  over  that  sullen  reserve  in  the  character  of 
the  husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  which  alone  was 
sufficient  to  render  him  unpopular.  "  I  hope,"  he 
says,  "that  none  of  our  countrymen  will  be  so  in- 
judicious as  to  think  his  reservedness  the  effect  of 
sullenness  or  pride ;  nor  mistake  that  for  state,  which 
really  proceeds  from  modesty,  caution,  and  delibera- 
tion ;  for  he  is  very  affable  to  such  as  accost  him, 
and  expects  that  others  should  speak  to  him  first, 
which  is  the  best  information  I  could  have  from  all 
about  him,  and  I  partly  know  to  be  true  by  expe- 
rience." 

Then  we  have  a  trait  in  the  electoral  character 
which  was  not  to  be  found  subsequently  in  the  king ; 
"for,"  says  the  hanger-on  to  Lord  Macclesfield's  am- 
bassadorial cloak,  "  as  to  what  I  said  of  his  frugality 
in  laying  out  the  public  money,  I  need  not  give  a 
more  particular  proof  than  that  all  the  expenses  of 


176  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

his  court,  as  to  eating,  drinking,  fire,  candles,  and 
the  like,  are  duly  paid  every  Saturday  night ;  the  offi- 
cers of  his  army  receive  their  pay  every  month,  so 
likewise  his  envoys  in  every  part  of  Europe ;  and  all 
the  officers  of  his  household,  with  the  rest  that  are 
on  the  civil  list,  are  cleared  off  every  half  year."  We 
are  then  assured  that  his  administration  was  equable, 
mild,  and  prudent,  —  a  triple  assertion,  which  his 
own  life,  and  that  of  his  hardly  used  wife,  flatly 
denied.  Toland,  however,  will  have  it,  in  his  "  lively 
sense  of  favours  to  come,"  that  there  never  existed 
a  prince  who  was  so  ardently  beloved  by  his  subjects. 
On  this  point,  the  "  Petit  Roi  d'Yvetot "  of  Beran- 
ger  sinks  into  comparative  unpopularity.  Hanover 
itself  is  said  to  be  without  division  or  faction,  and  all 
Hanoverians  as  being  in  a  condition  of  ecstasy  at 
the  Solomon-like  rectitude  and  jurisdiction  of  his 
Very  Serene  Highness.  But  it  must  be  remembered 
that  all  this  is  said  by  a  man  who  never  condescended 
to  remember  that  George  Louis  had  a  wife.  He  is 
entirely  oblivious  of  the  captive  consort  of  the  elector, 
but  he  can  afford  to  express  admiration  for  the  elect- 
or's mistresses.  He  describes  Madame  Kielman- 
segge,  the  daughter  of  the  Countess  von  Platen,  and 
who  occupied  near  the  prince  a  station  similar  to 
that  which  her  mother  held  near  the  prince's  father, 
as  a  woman  of  sense  and  wit ;  and  of  Mile.  Schulem- 
berg,  he  says  that  she  is  especially  worthy  of  the 
rank  she  enjoys,  and  that,  "  in  the  opinion  of  others, 
as  well  as  mine,  she  is  a  lady  of  extraordinary  merit !  " 
—  such  merit  as  distinguished  the  niece  of  the  gov- 
ernor of  the  Philippine  Islands,  who,  under  the  mask 
of  attachment,  robbed  Gil  Bias  of  his  diamond  ring. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  177 

There  is  something  suggestive  in  much  of  what  is 
here  set  down.  A  lunatic  proposed  that  Sophia  of 
Hanover  should  succeed  to  the  throne  of  England ; 
and  the  hand  of  that  lady,  who  denied  the  apostolic 
succession  of  bishops,  and  sneered  at  the  episcopacy, 
was  first  kissed,  when  the  Act  of  Succession  was 
presented  to  her,  by  an  infidel,  the  son  of  a  Romish 
priest,  whose  book  against  the  mysteries  of  Christian- 
ity had  been  burned  in  the  streets  of  Dublin  by  the 
hands  of  the  hangman.  This  is  historically,  and  not 
satirically,  set  down.  Some,  at  the  time,  thought  it 
ominous  of  evil  consequences,  but  we  who  live  to  see 
the  consequences  may  learn  therefrom  to  disregard 
omens.  Whatever  may  be  said  upon  this  point,  how- 
ever, there  only  remains  to  be  added,  that  the  lega- 
tion left  Hanover,  loaded  with  presents.  The  earl 
received  the  portrait  of  the  electress,  with  an  elec- 
toral crown  in  diamonds,  by  way  of  mounting  to  the 
frame.  George  Louis  bestowed  upon  him  a  gold 
basin  and  ewer,  —  no  unsuitable  present  to  the  native 
of  a  country  whose  people  were  distinguished,  to  a 
later  period  than  this,  as  being  the  only  civilised  peo- 
ple who  sat  down  to  meat  without  previous  ablution, 
even  of  the  hands.  Gold  medals  and  snuff-boxes 
were  showered  among  the  other  members.  The 
chaplain,  Doctor  Sandys,  was  especially  honoured  by 
rich  gifts  in  medals  and  books.  He  was  the  first 
who  ever  read  the  service  of  our  Church  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  electress.  She  joined  in  it  with  apparent 
fervour,  and  admired  it  generally ;  but  when  a  hint 
was  conveyed  to  her  that  it  might  be  well  were  she 
to  introduce  it  in  place  of  the  Calvinistic  form  used  in 
her  chapel,  as  of  the  Lutheran  in  that  of  the  elector, 


178          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

she  shook  her  head  with  a  smile ;  said  that  there  was 
no  difference  between  the  three  forms,  in  essentials, 
and  that  episcopacy  was  merely  the  established  form 
in  England.  She  thought  for  the  present  she  would 
"  let  well  alone."  And  it  was  done  accordingly ! 

In  the  year  1705,  the  English  Parliament  passed 
an  act  for  naturalising  the  Princess  Sophia,  Electress 
and  Duchess-dowager  of  Hanover,  and  the  issue  of 
her  body.  This  was  an  act,  therefore,  which  made 
an  Englishman  of  George  Louis.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, in  honour  of  such  an  event  that  a  short  season 
of  freedom  was  granted  to  the  prisoner  of  Ahlden. 

In  the  year  last  mentioned,  the  war  was  raging 
which  France  was  carrying  on  for  the  purposes  of  ex- 
tending her  limits  and  influence,  and  which  England 
and  her  allies  had  entered  into  in  order  to  resist  such 
aggression,  and  restore  that  terribly  oscillating  matter 
—  the  balance  of  European  power.  The  Duke  of 
Marlborough  had,  at  the  prayer  of  the  Dutch  States, 
left  the  banks  of  the  Moselle,  in  order  to  help  Hol- 
land, menaced  on  the  side  of  Liege  by  a  strong 
French  force.  Our  great  duke  left  General  D'Aubach 
at  Treves  to  secure  the  magazines  which  the  English 
and  Dutch  had  laid  up  there ;  but  upon  the  approach 
of  Marshal  Villars,  D'Aubach  destroyed  the  maga- 
zines and  abandoned  Treves,  of  which  the  French 
immediately  took  possession.  This  put  an  end  to  all 
the  schemes  which  had  been  laid  for  attacking  France 
on  the  side  of  the  Moselle,  where  her  frontiers  were 
but  weak,  and  carried  her  confederates  back  to  Flan- 
ders, where,  as  the  old-fashioned  chronicler,  Salmon, 
remarks,  "  they  yearly  threw  away  thousands  of  brave 
fellows  against  stone  walls."  Thereupon,  Hanover 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  179 

became  menaced.  On  this,  Horace  Walpole  has 
something  in  point : 

"  As  the  genuine  wife  was  always  detained  in  her 
husband's  power,  he  seems  not  to  have  wholly  dis- 
solved their  union ;  for,  on  the  approach  of  the 
French  army  toward  Hanover,  during  Queen  Anne's 
reign,  the  Duchess  of  Halle  (Ahlden)  was  sent  home 
to  her  father  and  mother,  who  doted  on  their  only 
child,  and  did  retain  her  for  a  whole  year,  and  did 
implore,  though  in  vain,  that  she  might  continue  to 
reside  with  them." 

Of  the  incidents  of  this  second  separation  nothing 
is  known,  but  conjecture  may  well  supply  all  its  grief 
and  pain.  It  would  seem,  however,  as  if  some  of  the 
restrictions  were  taken  off  from  the  rules  by  which 
the  captive  was  held.  There  was  no  prohibition  of 
intercourse  with  the  parents ;  for  the  Duke  of  Zell 
had  resolved  on  proceeding  to  visit  his  daughter,  but 
only  deferred  his  visit  until  the  conclusion  of  a  grand 
hunt,  in  which  he  was  anxious  to  take  part.  He  went ; 
and  between  fatigue,  exposure  to  inclement  weather, 
and  neglect  on  his  return,  he  became  seriously  ill, 
rapidly  grew  worse,  died  on  the  28th  of  August, 
1705,  and  by  his  death  gave  the  domains  of  a  duke- 
dom to  Hanover,  and  deprived  his  daughter  of  a 
newly  acquired  friend. 

The  death  of  the  Duke  of  Zell,  if  it  caused  profit 
to  Hanover,  was  also  followed  by  honour  to  Berns- 
torf.  The  services  of  that  official  were  so  agreeable 
to  George  Louis  that  he  appointed  him  to  the  post 
of  prime  minister  of  Hanover,  and  at  the  same  time 
made  him  a  count.  The  death  of  the  father  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  was,  however,  followed  by  consequences 


i8o  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

more  fatal  than  those  just  named.  The  severity 
of  the  imprisonment  of  the  princess  was  much 
aggravated ;  and  though  she  was  permitted  to  have 
an  occasional  interview  with  her  mother,  all  applica- 
tion to  be  allowed  to  see  her  two  children  was  sternly 
refused,  —  and  this  refusal,  as  the  poor  prisoner  used 
to  remark,  was  the  bitterest  portion  of  her  misery. 

It  was  of  her  son  that  George  Louis  used  to  say, 
in  later  years,  "  II  est  fougeux,  mais  il  a  du  cceur,"  — 
hot-headed  but  not  heartless.  George  Augustus  man- 
ifested this  disposition  very  early  in  life.  He  was  on 
one  occasion  hunting  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Luis- 
berg,  not  many  miles  from  the  scene  of  his  mother's 
imprisonment,  when  he  made  a  sudden  resolution  to 
visit  her,  regardless  of  the  strict  prohibition  against 
such  a  course,  laid  on  him  by  his  father  and  the 
Hanoverian  government.  Laying  spurs  to  his  horse, 
he  galloped  at  full  speed  from  the  field,  and  in  the 
direction  of  Ahlden.  His  astonished  suite,  seeing 
the  direction  which  he  was  following  at  so  furious  a 
rate,  immediately  suspected  his  design,  and  became 
legally  determined  to  frustrate  it.  They  left  pursu- 
ing the  stag,  and  took  to  chasing  the  prince.  The 
heir  apparent  led  them  far  away  over  field  and  furrow, 
to  the  great  detriment  of  the  wind  and  persons  of  his 
pursuers ;  and  he  would  have  distanced  the  whole 
"body  of  flying  huntsmen,  but  that  his  steed  was  less 
fleet  than  those  of  two  officers  of  the  electoral  house- 
hold, who  kept  close  to  the  fugitive,  and  at  last 
came  up  with  him  on  the  skirts  of  a  wood  adjacent 
to  Ahlden.  With  mingled  courtesy  and  firmness 
they  represented  to  him  that  he  could  not  be  per- 
mitted to  go  farther  in  a  direction  which  was  for- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  181 

bidden,  as  by  so  doing  he  would  not  only  be  treating 
the  paternal  orders  with  contempt,  but  would  be 
making  them  accomplices  in  his  crime  of  disobedi- 
ence. George  Augustus,  vexed  and  chafed,  argued 
the  matter  with  them,  appealed  to  their  affections 
and  feelings,  and  endeavoured  to  convince  them  both 
as  men  and  as  ministers,  as  human  beings  and  as 
mere  official  red-tapists,  that  he  was  authorised  to 
continue  his  route  to  Ahlden,  by  every  law,  earthly 
or  divine. 

The  red-tapists,  however,  acknowledged  no  law 
under  such  circumstances,  but  that  of  their  electoral 
lord  and  master,  and  that  law  they  would  not  permit 
to  be.  broken.  The  prince  would  have  made  a  note 
of  their  protest,  to  shield  them  subsequently  from 
their  master's  displeasure,  but  they  were  too  resolute 
to  be  content  with  merely  making  a  protest  against  a 
course  which  it  was  in  their  power  to  prevent,  and 
accordingly,  laying  hold  of  the  bridle  of  the  prince's 
steed,  they  turned  its  head  homewards,  and  rode 
away  with  George  Augustus  in  a  state  of  full  discon- 
tent and  strict  arrest. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  SUCCESSION DEATH  OF  THE  ELECTRESS 

Marriage  of  Prince  George  to  Princess  Caroline  of  Anspach,  and  of 
His  Sister  to  the  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia —  Honours  Conferred 
by  Queen  Anne  on  Prince  George  —  Intention  to  Bring  over 
to  England  the  Princess  Sophia  —  Opposed  by  Queen  Anne  — 
Foundation  of  the  Kingdom  of  Prussia  —  The  Establishment  of 
This  Protestant  Kingdom  Promoted  by  the  Jesuits  —  The  Elect- 
ress  Sophia's  Visit  to  Loo  —  The  Law  Granting  Taxes  on  Births, 
Deaths,  and  Marriages  —  Complaint  of  Queen  Anne  against  the 
Electress  —  Tom  d'Urfey's  Doggerel  Verses  on  Her  —  Death  of 
the  Electress  —  Character  of  Her. 

IN  some  of  the  comedies  of  Terence,  the  heroines 
—  the  most  important  personages  in  the  play  —  are 
heard  of,  but  never  seen  ;  much  spoken  about,  but 
never  speaking.  What  a  coil  there  is  in  the  Phormio, 
for  instance,  touching  Phanium,  the  wife  of  Antipho, 
and  Pamphila,  the  "  serva  a  Phaedria  amata !  "  —  and 
yet  how  little  is  really  known  about  either !  Poor 
Sophia  Dorothea  in  the  drama  of  her  life  at  Ahlden  is 
something  like  the  two  characters  in  the  Athenian 
drama  of  the  swarthy  African ;  with  this  difference, 
however,  that  she  is  not,  as  they  are,  the  object  of  a 
human  love.  She  is  off  the  stage,  and  little,  indeed, 
is  known  of  her,  save  that  sh$  is  immured  in  a  dull 
castle,  or  taking  exercise  within  the  dull  limits  of 
a  dull  country.  Beyond  this,  there  is  nothing  nar- 
rated of  her  during  the  first  ten  years  of  her  captivity. 

182 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  183 

Something  startling  and  dramatic  had  like  to  have 
happened  when  George  Augustus  suddenly  resolved 
to  visit  his  mother,  but  was  obstructed  in  his  resolu- 
tion. His  sire,  meditating  on  the  fact,  determined  to 
provide  him  with  a  wife. 

The  elector  then  meditating,  as  I  have  said,  on  this 
sudden  development  of  the  domestic  affections  of  his 
son,  resolved  to  aid  such  development,  not  by  giving 
him  access  to  his  mother,  but  by  bestowing  on  him 
the  hand  of  a  consort.  Of  this  lady  I  shall  have  to 
speak  more  at  length  hereafter,  for  she  became 
Queen  Consort  of  England,  at  the  accession  of  her 
husband,  George  II.  In  the  meantime,  it  will  be 
sufficient  to  record  here  what  is  said  of  her  by 
Bur  net : 

"  While  the  house  of  Austria  was  struggling  with 
great  difficulties,  two  pieces  of  pomp  and  magnifi- 
cence consumed  a  great  part  of  their  treasure  :  an 
embassy  was  sent  from  Lisbon  to  demand  the 
emperor's  sister  for  that  king,  which  was  done  with 
an  unusual  and  extravagant  expense  ;  a  wife  was  to 
be  sought  for  King  Charles  (of  Spain)  among  the 
Protestant  courts,  for  there  was  not  a  suitable  match 
in  the  Popish  courts.  He  had  seen  the  Princess  of 
Anspach,  and  was  much  taken  with  her ;  so  that 
great  applications  were  made  to  persuade  her  to 
change  her  religion,  but  she  could  not  be  prevailed  on 
to  buy  a  crown  at  so  dear  a  rate  ;  and  soon  after  she 
was  married  to  the  prince  electoral  of  Brunswick, 
which  gave  a  glorious  character  of  her  to  this  nation ; 
and  her  pious  firmness  is  likely  to  be  rewarded  even 
in  this  life,  with  a  much  better  crown  than  that 
which  she  rejected.  The  Princess  of  Wolfenbiittel 


1 84          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

was  not  so  firm,  so  that  she  was  brought  to  Vienna, 
and  some  time  after  was  married  by  proxy  to  King 
Charles,  and  was  sent  to  Italy  on  her  way  to  Spain. 
The  solemnity  with  which  these  affairs  were  managed, 
in  all  this  distress  of  their  affairs,  consumed  a  vast 
deal  of  treasure ;  for  such  was  the  pride  of  those 
courts  on  such  occasions  that,  rather  than  fail  in 
a  point  of  splendour,  they  would  let  their  most 
important  affairs  go  to  wrack.  That  princess  was 
landed  at  Barcelona,  and  the  Queen  of  Portugal  the 
same  year  came  to  Holland,  to  be  carried  to  Lisbon 
by  a  squadron  of  the  English  fleet." 

Caroline  of  Anspach  was  a  very  accomplished 
young  lady,  and  much  of  such  accomplishments  was 
owing  to  the  careful  education  which  she  received  at 
the  hands  of  the  best-loved  child  of  the  electress, 
Sophia  Charlotte,  Electress  of  Brandenburg,  and  the 
first,  but  short-lived,  Queen  of  Prussia.  If  the 
instructress  was  able,  the  pupil  was  apt.  She  was 
quick,  inquiring,  intelligent,  and  studious.  Her  appli- 
cation was  great,  her  perseverance  unvaried,  and  her 
memory  excellent.  She  learned  quickly,  and  retained 
largely,  seldom  forgetting  anything  worth  remem- 
brance ;  and  was  an  equally  good  judge  of  books  and 
individuals.  Her  perception  of  character  has,  per- 
haps, never  been  surpassed.  She  had  no  inclination 
for  trivial  subjects,  nor  affection  for  trivial  people. 
She  had  a  heart  and  mind  only  for  philosophers  and 
philosophy  ;  but  she  was  not  the  less  a  lively  girl,  or 
the  more  a  pedant,  on  that  account.  She  delighted 
in  lively  conversation,  and  could  admirably  lead  or 
direct  it.  Her  knowledge  of  languages  was  equal  to 
that  of  Sophia  of  Hanover,  of  whom  she  was  also  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  185 

equal  in  wit  and  in  repartee.  But  therewith  she  was 
more  tender,  more  gentle,  more  generous.  When 
she  became  the  wife  of  George  Augustus,  it  was 
again  like  uniting  Iphigenia  to  Cymon.  But  the 
Cymon  of  the  Iphigenia  of  Anspach  could  not  appreci- 
ate the  treasure  confided  to  him,  and  though  he 
could  never  despise  his  wife,  it  can  be  hardly  said 
that  he  ever  truly  loved  her. 

The  marriage  of  George  Augustus,  Electoral  Prince 
of  Brunswick-Hanover,  with  Caroline,  daughter  of 
John  Frederick,  Margrave  of  Anspach,  was  solem- 
nised in  the  year  1705.  It  was  rather  an  eventful 
year  for  England.  It  was  that  in  which  Marlborough 
forced  the  French  lines  at  Tirlemont,  a  feat  for  which 
the  nation  rendered  public  thanksgiving  to  God.  It 
was  the  year  in  which  England  poured  out  some  of 
her  best  blood,  in  order  to  secure  the  throne  of  Spain 
to  a  prince  of  the  house  of  Austria,  — a  service  for 
which  Austria  repaid  her  only  with  ingratitude.  It 
was  the  year  in  which  the  two  Houses  of  Convocation 
were  vulgarly  brawling  at  each  other  concerning  the 
right  of  adjournment ;  a  dispute,  which  her  Majesty 
Queen  Anne  settled  by  proroguing  the  contentious 
assembly,  and  by  addressing  a  letter  to  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  declaratory  of  her  resolution 
to  maintain  her  supremacy,  and  the  subordination  of 
presbyters  to  bishops.  It  was  the  year  in  which 
died  Queen  Catherine,  the  patient  wife  and  very 
resigned  widow  of  the  graceless  Charles  II. ;  and 
finally,  it  was  the  year  in  which  the  act  passed  for 
"naturalising  the  Princess  Sophia,  Electress  and 
Duchess-dowager  of  Hanover,  and  the  issue  of  her 
body." 


i86  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

The  wife  of  George  Augustus  was  of  the  same 
age  as  her  husband.  She  had  had  the  misfortune 
to  lose  her  father  when  she  was  yet  extremely  young, 
and  had  been,  as  I  have  before  remarked,  brought 
up  at  the  court  of  Berlin  under  the  guardianship, 
and  no  insufficient  one,  of  Sophia  Charlotte,  the 
consort  of  Frederick  of  Prussia.  She  gave  promise 
in  her  childhood  of  being  a  clever  woman,  and  that 
promise,  at  least,  was  not  "made  to  the  ear  to  be 
broken  to  the  hope."  How  this  promise  was  fulfilled, 
we  shall  be  able  to  see  in  a  future  page. 

The  sister  of  George  Augustus,  the  only  daughter 
of  Sophia  Dorothea,  and  bearing  the  same  baptismal 
names  as  her  mother,  was  also  married  during  the 
captivity  of  the  latter.  One  can  hardly  conceive  of 
wedding-bells  ringing  merrily  when  the  mother  of 
the  bride  is  a  stigmatised  woman,  pining  in  a  prison. 
Three  remarkable  Englishmen  were  present  at  the 
marriage  of  the  daughter  of  Sophia  Dorothea  with 
the  Prince  Royal  of  Prussia.  These  were  Lord 
Halifax,  Sir  John  Vanbrugh,  and  Joseph  Addison. 
The  last-mentioned  had  yet  fresh  on  his  brow  the 
laurels  which  he  had  gained  by  writing  what  Warton 
ill-naturedly  called  his  rhyming  gazette,  "The  Cam- 
paign," in  a  garret  in  the  Haymarket,  and  in  celebra- 
tion of  the  victory  at  Blenheim.  Queen  Anne,  who 
had  restored  Halifax  to  a  favour  from  which  he  had 
fallen,  entrusted  him  to  carry  the  bill  for  the  natu- 
ralisation of  the  electoral  family,  and  for  the  better 
security  of  the  Protestant  line  of  succession,  —  and 
also  the  Order  of  the  Garter  for'the  electoral  prince. 
On  this  mission,  Addison  was  the  united  companion 
of  the  patron  whom  he  so  choicely  flattered.  Van- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  187 

brugh  was  present  in  his  official  character  of  Claren- 
cieux  King  at  Arms,  and  performed  the  ceremony  of 
investiture.  The  little  court  of  Hanover  was  joyfully 
splendid  on  this  doubly  festive  occasion.  The  nuptials 
were  celebrated  with  more  accompanying  gladness 
than  ever  followed  them.  When  Addison,  some  years 
subsequently,  memorialised  George  I.,  the  petition 
stated  "  that  my  Lord  Halifax,  upon  going  to  Hanover, 
desired  him  to  accompany  him  thither ;  at  which 
time,  though  he  had  not  the  title  of  his  secretary,  he 
officiated  as  such,  without  any  other  reward  than  the 
satisfaction  of  showing  his  zeal  for  that  illustrious 
family." 

The  nuptials  of  the  young  princess  with  Frederick 
William,  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia,  lacked  neither 
mirth  nor  ceremony  for  the  circumstance  just  alluded 
to.  The  pomp  was  something  uncommon  in  its  way, 
and  the  bride  must  have  been  wearied  of  being  mar- 
ried long  before  the  stupendous  solemnity  had  at 
length  reached  its  slowly-arrived-at  conclusion.  She 
became  Queen  of  Prussia  in  1712,  and  of  her  too  I 
shall  have  to  speak  a  little  more  in  detail  in  another 
chapter.  Here  it  will  suffice  to  say  that  she  was  by 
no  means  indifferent  to  the  hard  fate  under  which 
her  mother  groaned.  She  was  the  better  enabled 
to  sympathise  with  one  who  suffered  through  the 
cruel  oppression  and  injustice  of  a  husband,  from 
the  fact  that  her  own  illustrious  spouse  was,  in  every 
sense  of  the  word,  her  "lord  and  master,"  and  treated 
her  with  as  little  consideration  as  though  she  had 
been  head-servant  of  his  exceedingly  untidy  establish- 
ment, rather  than  consort  and  queen,  to  whom,  in 
common  with  his  children,  he  administered  now  a 


1 88          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

heavy  blow  and  even  a  harsh  word,  and  whom  he 
never  soothed  with  a  kind  expression  but  when  he 
had  some  evil  intention  in  giving  it  utterance. 

Honours  now  fell  thick  upon  the  electoral  family, 
but  Sophia  Dorothea  was  not  permitted  to  have  any 
share  therein.  In  1706,  Queen  Anne  created  the 
son  of  George  Louis,  the  old  suitor  for  her  hand,  — 
Baron  of  Tewkesbury,  Viscount  Northallerton,  Earl 
of  Milford  Haven,  Marquis  and  Duke  of  Cambridge. 
With  these  honours  it  was  also  decreed  that  he  should 
enjoy  full  precedence  over  the  entire  peerage. 

There  was  a  strong  party  in  England  whose  most 
earnest  desire  it  was  that  the  Electress  Sophia,  in 
whose  person  the  succession  to  the  crown  of  Great 
Britain  was  settled,  should  repair  to  London,  —  not 
permanently  to  reside  there,  but  in  order  that  during 
a  brief  visit  she  might  receive  the  homage  of  the 
Protestant  party.  She  was,  however,  reluctant  to 
move  from  her  books,  philosophy,  and  cards,  until 
she  could  be  summoned  as  queen.  Failing  here,  an 
attempt  was  made  to  bring  over  George  Louis,  who 
was  nothing  loth  to  come ;  but  the  idea  of  a  visit 
from  him  was  to  poor  Queen  Anne  the  uttermost 
abomination.  Her  Majesty  had  some  grounds  for 
her  dislike  to  a  visit  from  her  old  wooer.  It  was  not 
merely  the  feeling  which  every  one  with  a  fortune  to 
leave  is  said  to  entertain  toward  an  heir  presumptive, 
but  that  she  was  nervously  in  terror  of  a  monster 
popular  demonstration.  Such  a  demonstration  was 
publicly  talked  of ;  and  the  enemies  of  the  house  of 
Stuart,  by  way  of  instruction  and  warning  to  the 
queen,  whose  Jacobite  bearings  toward  her  brother 
were  matter  of  notoriety,  had  determined,  in  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  189 

event  of  George  Louis  visiting  England,  to  give  him 
an  escort  into  London  that  should  amount  to  the 
very  significant  number  of  some  forty  or  fifty  thou- 
sand men. 

It  was  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  who  originally 
moved  the  House  of  Lords  for  leave  to  bring  in  a 
bill  to  give  the  Electoral  Prince  of  Hanover,  as  Duke 
of  Cambridge,  the  precedence  of  peers.  Leave  was 
given,  but  some  of  the  adherents  of  the  House  of 
Hanover  did  not  think  that  the  bill  went  far  enough, 
and  accordingly  the  lord  treasurer,  previous  to  the 
introduction  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire's  measure, 
"  offered  a  bill,  giving  precedence  to  the  whole  elect- 
oral family,  as  the  children  and  nephews  of  the 
Crown ; "  and  it  was  intimated  that  bills  relating  to 
honours  and  precedence  ought  to  come  from  the 
Crown.  "The  Duke  of  Devonshire,"  adds  Burnet, 
"  would  make  no  dispute  on  this  head ;  if  the  thing 
passed,  he  acquiesced  in  the  manner  of  passing  it, 
only  he  thought  it  lay  within  the  authority  of  the 
House."  On  this  occasion  the  court  seemed,  even 
to  an  affectation,  to  show  a  particular  zeal  in  promoting 
this  bill ;  for  it  passed  through  both  Houses  in  two 
days,  it  being  read  thrice  in  a  day  in  them  both. 
"  For  all  this  haste,"  continues  the  minute  recorder, 
"the  court  did  not  seem  to  design  any  such  bill  till 
it  was  proposed  by  others,  out  of  whose  hands  they 
thought  fit  to  take  it."  In  other  words,  the  court 
would  not  have  been  Hanoverian  in  this  matter,  but 
for  outward  popular  pressure. 

Some  time  previous  to  this,  the  Earl  of  Rochester 
had  designed  to  bring  in  a  bill  which  he  described  as 
concerning  the  security  of  the  nation,  and  the  means 


190          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

whereby  such  security  was  to  be  accomplished  con- 
sisted in  bringing  over  the  Electress  Sophia  perma- 
nently to  reside  in  England. 

The  party  advocating  this  measure  comprised  men 
who  were  anything  but  zealous  for  the  interests  of  the 
family  for  whose  profit  it  was  designed ;  but  they 
favoured  it  for  the  sufficient  political  reason  that  it 
was  a  measure  displeasing  to  Queen  Anne.  It  was 
hoped  by  them  that  out  of  the  discussion  a  confusion 
might  arise  from  which  something  favourable  might 
be  drawn  for  the  pretensions  of  the  "  Prince  of 
Wales."  "They  reckoned  such  a  motion  would  be 
popular,  and  if  either  the  court  or  the  Whigs,  on 
whom  the  court  was  now  beginning  to  look  more 
favourably,  should  oppose  it,  this  would  cast  a  load 
on  them  as  men,  who,  after  all  the  zeal  they  had 
expressed  for  that  succession,  did  now,  upon  the 
hopes  of  favour  at  court,  throw  it  up ;  and  those 
who  had  been  hitherto  considered  as  the  enemies  of 
that  house  might  hope,  by  this  motion,  to  overcome 
all  the  prejudices  which  the  nation  had  taken  up 
against  them;  and  they  might  create  a  merit  to 
themselves  in  the  minds  of  that  family  by  this  early 
zeal,  which  they  resolved  now  to  express  for  it." 

In  a  subsequent  session  of  Parliament,  the  question 
of  the  residence  in  this  country  of  the  declared  suc- 
cessor to  the  crown  was  introduced  into  more  than 
one  debate.  At  all  these  debates  (in  the  House  of 
Lords)  Queen  Anne  herself  was  present.  Lord 
Haversham,  in  his  speech  arraigning  the  conduct 
of  the  Duke  of  Marlborough  in  his  various  cam- 
paigns, touched  also  on  this  matter.  "He  said  we 
had  declared  a  successor  to  the  crown  who  was  at 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  191 

a  great  distance  from  us,  while  the  Pretender  was 
much  nearer,  and  Scotland  was  aroused  and  ready  to 
receive  him,  and  seemed  resolved  not  to  have  the 
same  successor  for  whom  England  had  declared. 
There  were  threatening  dangers  that  hung  over  us, 
and  might  be  near  us.  He  concluded  that  he  did 
not  see  how  they  could  be  prevented  and  the  nation 
made  safe  by  any  other  way  but  by  inviting  the  next 
successor  to  come  and  live  among  us."  The  Duke 
of  Buckingham,  the  Earls  of  Rochester,  Nottingham, 
and  Anglesea,  carried  on  the  debate  with  great  ear- 
nestness. "  It  was  urged  that  they  had  sworn  to 
maintain  the  succession,  and  by  that  they  were  bound 
to  insist  on  the  motion,  since  there  were  no  means  so 
sure  to  maintain  it  as  to  have  the  successor  upon  the 
spot  ready  to  maintain  his  right.  It  appeared  through 
our  whole  history  that  whoever  came  first  into  Eng- 
land had  always  carried  it ;  the  pretending  successor 
might  be  in  England  within  three  days,  whereas  it 
might  be  three  weeks  before  the  declared  successor 
would  come.  From  thence  it  was  inferred  that  the 
danger  was  apparent  and  dreadful  if  the  successor 
should  not  be  brought  over.  With  these  lords,  by  a 
strange  reverse,  all  the  Tories  joined  ;  and  by  another, 
and  as  strange  a  reverse,  all  the  Whigs  joined  in 
opposing  it.  They  thought  this  motion  was  to  be 
left  wholly  to  the  queen ;  that  it  was  neither  proper 
nor  safe,  either  for  the  Crown  or  the  nation,  that  the 
heir  should  not  be  in  an  entire  dependence  on  the 
queen  ;  a  rivalry  between  two  courts  might  bring  us 
into  great  destruction,  and  be  attended  with  very  ill 
consequences.  The  next  successor  had  expressed  a 
full  satisfaction,  and  rested  on  the  assurances  the 


192  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

queen  had  given  her  of  her  firm  adherence  to  the 
title  and  to  the  maintaining  of  it.  The  nation  was 
prepared  for  it  by  orders  the  queen  had  given  to 
name  her  in  the  daily  prayers  of  the  Church.  Great 
endeavours  had  been  used  to  bring  the  Scotch  nation 
to  declare  the  same  successor.  It  was  true  we  still 
wanted  one  great  security,  —  we  had  not  yet  made  any 
provisions  for  carrying  on  the  government,  for  main- 
taining the  public  quiet,  for  proclaiming  and  for 
sending  for  the  successor,  and  for  keeping  things  in 
order  till  the  successor  should  come.  It  seemed, 
therefore,  necessary  to  make  an  effectual  provision 
against  the  disorders  which  might  happen  in  such  an 
interval.  This  was  proposed  first  by  myself  (Burnet) 
and  seconded  by  the  Lord  Godolphin,  and  all  the 
Whigs  went  into  it ;  and  so  the  question  was  put 
before  the  other  motion  as  first  put,  by  a  previous 
division,  whether  that  should  be  put  or  not,  and  was 
carried  in  the  negative  by  about  three  to  one." 

If  this  be  not  elegantly,  it  is  at  least  clearly  ex- 
pressed by  Burnet,  who,  in  adding  that  the  queen 
was  present  throughout  this  monstrous  debate,  in- 
forms us  that  her  Majesty  was  "annoyed  at  the 
behaviour  of  some  who,  when  they  had  credit  with 
her,  and  apprehended  that  such  a  motion  might  be 
made  by  the  Whigs,  had  possessed  her  with  deep 
prejudices  against  it,  for  they  made  her  apprehend 
that,  when  the  next  successor  should  be  brought 
over,  she  herself  would  be  so  eclipsed  by  it  that  she 
would  be  much  in  the  successor's  power,  and  reign 
only  at  her  or  his  courtesy ;  yet  these  very  persons, 
having  now  lost  their  interest  in  her  and  their  posts, 
were  driving  on  that  very  motion  which  they  made 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  193 

her  apprehend  was  the  most  fatal  thing  that  could 
befall.  This  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough  told  me, 
but  she  named  no  person  ;  and  upon  it  a  very  black 
suspicion  was  taken  up  by  some  that  the  proposers 
of  this  matter  knew,  or  at  least  believed,  that  the 
queen  would  not  agree  to  this  motion  which  way 
soever  it  might  be  brought  to  her,  whether  in  an 
address  or  in  a  bill ;  and  then  they  might  reckon  that 
this  would  give  such  a  jealousy,  and  create  such  a 
misunderstanding  between  her  and  the  Parliament, 
or,  rather,  the  whole  nation,  as  would  unsettle  her 
whole  government,  and  put  all  things  in  disorder. 
But  this  was  only  a  suspicion,  and  more  cannot  be 
made  of  it." 

Plain  as  all  this  is  in  some  things  and  suggestive 
in  others,  it  does  not  explain  much  that  is  incompre- 
hensible and  unsatisfactory  in  the  history  of  the  suc- 
cession settlement  and  the  intrigues  by  which  it  was 
accomplished.  The  question  first  became  a  serious 
one  when  the  son  of  Anne,  her  only  child,  the  hope 
of  Protestant  England,  died  in  the  year  1 700.  King 
William  bore  the  misfortune  which  had  befallen  his 
sister-in-law  with  that  cheerful  resignation  which  the 
selfish  feel  for  the  calamities  of  other  people.  He 
looked  very  sharply  to  the  pecuniary  profits  to  be 
made  by  the  suppression  of  the  young  duke's  house- 
hold, and  he  concerned  himself  very  little  touching 
the  outward  marks  of  mourning  which  custom  and 
decency  enjoined  as  observance  of  respect.  He  was 
then  himself  a  widowed  king  in  seclusion  at  Loo,  and 
such  of  the  Protestant  party  who  believed  that  the 
marriage  of  Anne  with  George  of  Denmark  would  be 
productive  of  no  further  issue,  busied  themselves  in 


194  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

finding  eligible  wives  for  King  William,  and  congrat- 
ulated themselves  on  the  prospects  of  a  succession 
thence  to  arise.  William,  however,  did  not  care  to 
second  their  views ;  and  he  was  in  this  condition  of 
disregard  for  the  succession  to  the  crown  when  he 
was  visited  by  the  Electress  Sophia  of  Hanover  and 
her  daughter,  the  Electress  of  Brandenburg.  The 
latter  was  that  Sophia  Charlotte  under  whose  super- 
intendence Caroline  of  Anspach,  the  queen-consort 
of  George  II.,  was  educated. 

It  was  said  that  this  visit  had  no  other  object  than 
to  secure  William's  influence  with  the  empress  for 
the  elevation  of  the  electorate  of  Brandenburg  to 
the  rank  of  a  kingdom  under  the  name  of  Prussia. 
William,  however,  possessed  no  such  influence,  and 
the  visit  alluded  to  had  no  such  object.  The  story 
of  the  rise  of  Prussia  may  be  told  in  a  very  few 
words,  and  it  is  not  disconnected  from  the  history  of 
Sophia  Dorothea,  for  the  crown  of  that  kingdom 
subsequently  rested  on  the  brow  of  her  only 
daughter. 

The  Polish  dukedom  of  Prussia  had  fallen,  by  in- 
heritance, to  the  Elector  of  Brandenburg  in  1618. 
About  forty  years  later  it  was  made  free  of  all 
Polish  jurisdiction,  and  annexed  to  Brandenburg  by 
treaty.  During  the  following  thirty  years  the  pos- 
sessions of  the  Great  Elector,  as  he  was  called,  were 
greatly  enlarged,  chiefly  by  marriage  treaties  or  by 
legal  inheritance ;  and  when  Frederick,  the  son  of 
the  Great  Elector,  succeeded  to  his  father's  domin- 
ions in  1688,  he  had  nothing  so  much  at  heart  as  the 
elevation  of  the  electorate  into  a  kingdom.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  the  title  of  king  from  the  Emperor 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  195 

of  Germany  not  without  difficulty.  His  claim  was 
grounded  on  the  fact  that  he  exercised  sovereign 
right  in  Prussia,  and  it  only  succeeded  by  being  sup- 
pcf.ed  by  promises  of  adherence  to  the  house  of 
Austria  in  all  difficulties,  and  by  a  bribe,  or  purchase- 
money,  of  nine  millions  of  thalers,  two  hundred  thou- 
sand of  which  went  into  the  pockets  of  the  Jesuits, 
whose  agency  brought  the  negotiation  to  a  successful 
close. 

In  1701,  only  a  few  months  after  the  visit  of  the 
Electress  Sophia  to  William  at  The  Hague,  the 
Elector  of  Brandenburg  crowned  himself,  at  Konigs- 
berg,  by  the  style  and  title  of  "  Frederick  I.,  King  in 
Prussia ; "  and  then  crowned  the  electress,  his  wife, 
as  she  knelt  before  him.  Such  is  the  brief  history  of 
the  foundation  of  the  kingdom  of  Prussia.  Such  a 
consummation  had  been  eagerly  obstructed  by  the 
knightly  orders  of  Germany,  and  hotly  opposed  by 
Rome.  The  Pope,  who  had  seen  the  old  protector 
to  Protestantism,  the  Elector  of  Saxony,  abandon  his 
trust,  could  not,  without  much  vexation,  witness  the 
establishment  in  Germany  of  a  new  stronghold  for 
the  reformed  religion,  and  under  the  more  secure  and 
influential  form  of  a  kingdom.  He  represented  that 
such  a  Protestant  kingdom  would  be  the  eternal 
adversary  of  the  Catholic  house  of  Austria,  and  in 
such  representation  he  was  not  to  be  gainsaid.  The 
most  amusing  fact  connected  therewith  is,  that  the 
Jesuits  in  Austria,  for  the  sake  of  a  pecuniary  "  con- 
sideration," furthered  the  establishment  of  the  Prot- 
estant monarchy  which  was  to  prove  a  thorn  in  the 
side  of  the  Catholic  imperial  power. 

Whatever  cause  attracted  the  Electress  of  Hanover 


196  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

to  Loo,  she  was  but  coldly  welcomed  by  William, 
who  paid  her  one  formal  visit,  and  then  suddenly 
departed  for  England.  He  probably  had  a  dread  of 
the  old  and  energetic  lady,  who  was  not  only  anxious 
to  settle  the  succession  in  her  own  family,  but  —  like 
the  provident  gentleman  who  bowed  to  the  statue  of 
Jupiter  in  a  museum,  and  begged  the  god  to  bear  the 
respect  in  mind,  if  he  should  ever  be  restored  to 
greatness  again  —  was  also  given  to  express  such 
concern  for  the  interests  of  the  exiled  family  as 
might  ensure  liberal  treatment  from  them,  should 
they,  in  popular  phrase,  ever  come  to  their  own 
again. 

The  times,  and  the  men  of  those  times,  were  full 
of  inconsistencies.  Thus,  William,  who  had  un- 
doubtedly first  opened,  as  I  have  previously  stated, 
negotiations  with  the  Hanoverian  family  to  secure 
their  succession  to  a  throne  from  which  he  had 
ejected  James  II.,  went  into  deep  mourning,  as  did 
half  England,  when  that  exiled  monarch  died.  The 
Princess  Anne  did  the  same,  and  yet,  as  queen,  she 
projected  and  sanctioned  the  bill  of  attainder  against 
the  son  and  heir  of  her  father ;  —  a  son  whom  Will- 
iam III.  had  proffered  to  adopt,  at  the  peace  of 
Ryswick ! 

When  the  old  Electress  of  Hanover  visited  William 
at  Loo,  her  visit  may  probably  have  had  reference  to 
a  favourite  project  of  that  sovereign,  —  namely,  the 
immediate  succession  of  the  electress  to  the  throne, 
on  his  demise,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  Princess  Anne. 
His  papers,  discovered  at  Kensington  after  his  de- 
cease, contained  many  references  to  this  subject ; 
and  it  may  have  been  that  it  was  because  he  had  so 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  197 

alluded  to  the  matter,  that  he  was  reluctant  to  treat 
of  it  verbally.  The  report  was  certainly  current  at 
the  time,  that  among  the  defunct  king's  papers  was 
a  written  recommendation,  or  what  might  be  inter- 
preted as  such,  to  invite  the  Electress  of  Hanover 
and  her  son  to  take  possession  of  the  throne  of  Eng- 
land immediately  after  his  death.  Pamphlets  were 
published  in  defence  of  the  queen's  rights,  against 
such  a  recommendation  of  exclusion.  The  govern- 
ment, indeed,  declared  that  the  report  of  the  intended 
exclusion  was  false  and  groundless ;  which  may  have 
been  the  case,  without  affecting  the  request  that  a 
hint  for  such  a  course  had  really  been  found  in  the 
papers  of  the  deceased  king. 

When  the  accession  of  Anne  brought  the  husband 
of  Sophia  Dorothea  one  step  nearer  to  the  throne  of 
England,  there  expired  a  law  which  was  one  of  the 
most  singular  in  connection  with  the  law  of  taxation ; 
and  the  singularity  alone  of  which  authorises  me  to 
make  mention  of  it  here.  In  April,  1695,  this  law 
had  been  passed,  under  the  title  of  an  act  for  granting 
to  his  Majesty  certain  rates  and  duties  upon  mar- 
riages, births,  and  burials,  and  upon  bachelors  and 
widowers,  "for  the  carrying  on  the  war  against 
France  with  vigour."  By  the  graduated  scale  of  this 
law,  which  commenced  with  the  deaths,  a  duke  or 
duchess  could  not  die  without  paying  £50  sterling 
for  the  enjoyment  of  the  luxury.  It  would  be  more 
correct,  perhaps,  to  say  that  the  heir  could  not 
administer  till  such  impost  had  been  paid.  A  mar- 
quis could  depart  at  a  diminished  cost  of  £40; 
while  an  earl  was  decreed  as  worth  only  £$  less 
than  a  marquis,  and  his  decease  brought  into  the 


198  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

treasury  the  sum  of  £3$.  The  scale  descended  till 
it  included  "every  gentleman,  or  so  reputed,  or  his 
wife,  2os."  and  also,  "every  person  having  a  real 
estate  of  £$o  per  annum,  or  in  personal  estate  £600, 
to  pay  2Os.,  and  for  his  wife  los."  Nobody  was  forgot- 
ten in  this  scale.  No  class  was  passed  over,  as  the 
town  of  Berwick  was  when  the  old  property  tax  was 
laid  on,  —  an  omission  which  the  indignant  town  on 
the  Tweed  resented  as  an  insult  gross  and  undeserved. 

A  similar  scale  affected  the  births :  a  duke  (or  an 
archbishop,  who  throughout  the  scale  ranked  as  a 
duke)  having  a  first  son  born  to  him,  was  mulcted  of 
^50  for  the  honour ;  while  the  commonest  citizen 
could  not  legally  be  a  father,  at  less  cost  in  taxation 
than  "  IQS.  for  every  son  and  daughter."  And  so 
again  with  marriages  :  a  ducal  knot  carried  with  it 
the  usual  dignified  ^50  to  the  treasury;  and  the 
scale  ran  gradually  down  till  the  marriage  tax  em- 
braced "  every  person  else  that  did  not  receive  alms," 
on  whom  a  levy  was  made  of  half  a  crown  to  the 
king,  in  addition  to  what  was  expected  by  the  min- 
ister. 

It  is  an  ordinary  policy  to  tax  luxuries  only ;  but 
under  this  law  every  condition  of  life  was  set  down 
as  a  luxury.  It  was  right,  perhaps,  to  set  down  mar- 
riage as  a  luxury,  for  it  is  intended  to  be  so ;  and 
where  such  is  not  the  case,  the  fault  lies  in  the 
parties  who  are  too  self-willed  to  allow  it  to  be  an 
enjoyment.  Bachelors  and  widowers  probably  paid 
the  impost  with  decent  cheerfulness.  Death,  as  an 
undoubted  luxury,  both  to  the  patient  and  to  the 
heir  who  profited  by  it,  might  also  be  fairly  placed 
under  the  operation  of  this  law.  The  cruelty  in  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  199 

enactment  consisted  in  the  rate  put  upon  births.  It 
was  not  misery  enough  that  a  man  should  be  born, 
but  that  his  welcome  should  be  put  in  jeopardy  by 
his  coming  in  company  with  the  tax-gatherer.  I  can 
fancy  Mr.  Shandy  having  much  to  say  upon  this  par- 
ticular point ;  and  the  law  is  certainly  obnoxious  to 
much  Shandean  observation.  The  most  seriously 
cruel  portion  of  this  law  was  that,  however,  which 
affected  a  class  of  persons  who  could  ill  afford  to  be 
so  smitten  as  this  enactment  thus  smote  them.  Not 
only  was  every  person  who  did  not  receive  alms  com- 
pelled to  pay  one  penny  per  week,  but  one  farthing 
per  week,  in  the  pound,  was  levied  on  all  servants 
receiving  wages  amounting  to  £4  per  annum. 
"Those,"  says  Smollett,  "who  received  from  ^8  to 
£16,  paid  one  halfpenny  in  the  pound  per  week." 
The  hard-working  recipients  of  these  modest  earn- 
ings, therefore,  paid  a  very  serious  contribution  in 
order  that  the  war  with  France  might  be  carried  on 
with  vigour. 

To  return  from  this  digression  to  the  electoral 
family  and  the  question  of  the  succession  to  the 
crown  of  England,  it  may  be  observed,  that  on  the 
question  as  to  whether  the  Electress  Sophia,  and 
the  husband  of  the  imprisoned  Sophia  Dorothea, 
sanctioned  an  agitation  of  their  interests  in  England, 
so  as  to  give  a  continued  uneasiness  to  the  queen, 
much  is  to  be  said  on  both  sides.  Miss  Strickland, 
in  her  picturesque  and  able  "  Life  of  Queen  Anne," 
very  zealously  essays  to  prove  that  the  Electress 
Sophia  was  unexceptionable  and  disinterested  as  to 
her  conduct.  The  historian  just  named  cites  from 
the  journal  of  the  lord-keeper,  Cowper,  what  that 


200  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

lady  states  to  be  the  official  answer  of  the  princess 
to  all  the  ^invitations  which  had  been  agitated  by  the 
Hanoverian  Tories  during  the  year  1704  and  the 
succeeding  summer.  "  At  the  queen's  Cabinet  Coun- 
cil, Sunday,  November  n,  1705,  foreign  letters  read 
in  her  Majesty's  presence,  the  substance  remarkable, 
that  at  Hanover  was  a  person,  agent  to  the  discon- 
tented party  here,  to  invite  over  the  Princess  Sophia 
and  the  electoral  prince  (afterward  George  II.)  into 
England,  assuring  them  that  a  party  here  was  ready 
to  propose  it.  That  the  Princess  Sophia  had  caused 
the  same  person  to  be  acquainted,  'that  she  judged 
the  message  came  from  such  as  were  enemies  to  her 
family ;  that  she  would  never  hearken  to  such  a  pro- 
posal, but  when  it  came  from  the  Queen  of  England 
herself ; '  and  withal  she  had  discouraged  the  attempt 
so  much  that  it  was  believed  nothing  more  could  be 
said  in  it."  "The  moderate  and  humane  conduct  of 
the  Princess  Sophia,"  adds  Miss  Strickland,  —  "con- 
duct which  the  irrefragable  evidence  of  events  proved 
was  sincere  and  true,  did  not  mollify  the  burning 
jealousy  of  Queen  Anne.  If  we  may  believe  the 
correspondence  of  the  Jacobite  writer,  Doctor  Dave- 
nant,  angry  letters  were  written  by  Queen  Anne  to 
the  Princess  Sophia,  who,  knowing  how  little  she  had 
deserved  them,  and  being  of  a  high  spirit,  retorted 
with  displeasure,  yet  did  not  alter  the  intrinsic  integ- 
rity of  her  conduct.  The  Duchess  of  Marlborough  was 
reckless  in  her  abuse  of  the  Protestant  heiress ;  and 
it  is  certain,  by  her  letters,  that  she  worked  on  the  mind 
of  the  queen  with  all  her  might,  to  keep  up  her  jealousy 
and  alarm,  regarding  the  advancement  of  her  high- 
minded  cousin,  Sophia.  A  running  fit  of  angry 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  201 

correspondence  was  actually  kept  up  between  the 
queen  and  the  Princess  Sophia,  from  March  5,  1705. 
It  was  increased  at  every  violent  political  agitation, 
until  we  shall  see  the  scene  of  this  world's  glory 
close  almost  simultaneously  on  both  the  royal  kins- 
women." 

The  truth  is  that  Sophia,  who  was  naturally  reluc- 
tant to  come  to  England  upon  a  mere  popular  or 
partisan  invitation,  would  gladly  have  come  on  the 
bidding  of  the  queen.  This  was  never  given,  and 
hence  the  angry  correspondence.  It  is  said  that 
not  only  Anne,  but  that  Sophia  herself,  would  have 
sacrificed  the  interests  of  the  house  of  Hanover,  and 
would  have  secured  the  succession  to  the  son  of 
James  II.,  if  the  latter  would  have  consented  to  pro- 
fess the  Protestant  religion.  The  queen  and  electress 
were  perfectly  safe  in  consenting  to  such  a  sacrifice 
on  such  a  stipulation,  for  they  might  have  been  per- 
fectly sure  that  it  would  never  be  listened  to.  Then 
again,  much  has  been  said  about  the  disinterestedness 
of  the  electress,  and  of  George  Louis,  when  the  re- 
jected Whig  ministry,  toward  the  end  of  Anne's 
reign,  wrote  a  letter  to  Marlborough,  yet  in  command 
of  the  army  abroad,  offering  to  seize  the  queen  and 
proclaim  the  Electress  of  Hanover  as  regent,  if 
Marlborough  could  bring  over  a  force  upon  which 
he  could  depend,  to  support  them.  Marlborough 
is  declared  to  have  described  such  a  project  as  one 
of  rank  insanity ;  and  it  is  stated  that  Sophia  con- 
tented herself  with  recommending  her  son  to  the 
consideration  of  the  actual  ministry.  This  proves 
nothing  more,  either  for  mother  or  son,  than  that 
at  a  period  when  the  health  of  Anne  was  failing, 


202  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

they  were  very  prudently  contented  to  wait  for  an 
inheritance  which  every  day  brought  nearer  to  their 
grasp,  from  which  any  day  it  might  be  snatched  by 
popular  commotion. 

In  one  year,  the  queen  sent  a  request  to  the  elect- 
ress  to  aid  her  in  promoting  the  peace  of  Europe, 
and  a  present  to  her  goddaughter  Anne,  the  first 
child  of  George  Augustus  and  Caroline  of  Anspach. 
Earl  Rivers  carried  both  letter  and  present.  The 
letter  was  acknowledged  with  cold  courtesy  by  the 
electress,  in  a  communication  to  the  Earl  of  Straf- 
ford,  secretary  of  state.  The  communication  bears 
date  Nov.  n,  1711  ;  and,  after  saying  that  the  gift 
is  infinitely  esteemed,  the  electress  adds :  "  I  would 
not,  however,  give  my  parchment  for  it,  since  that 
will  be  an  everlasting  monument  in  the  archives  of 
Hanover,  and  the  present  for  the  little  princess  will 
go,  when  she  is  grown  up,  into  another  family."  It 
is  suggested  that  by  "  my  parchment "  is  meant  the 
queen's  letter  to  the  electress,  but  the  letter  was  a 
letter  and  nothing  more.  It  was  no  commission,  and 
is  not  likely  to  have  been  engrossed.  The  word 
"parchment,"  it  is  much  more  probable,  had  reference 
to  the  Act  of  Succession,  which  certainly  was,  and 
remains,  "an  everlasting  monument  in  the  archives 
of  Hanover." 

When  the  daughter  of  Sophia  Dorothea  married 
the  Prince  of  Prussia,  the  young  married  couple 
repaired  to  Brussels,  in  the  hope  of  receiving  an 
invitation  to  England  from  Queen  Anne.  They 
waited  in  vain,  and  returned  without  being  noticed 
at  all.  There  was  something  more  than  mere  jeal- 
ousy in  this  conduct  of  the  British  queen,  and  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  203 

angry  allusions  in  the  correspondence  of  Anne  and 
Sophia  tend  to  prove  this  ;  for  though  the  latter  may 
not  have  been,  and  probably  was  not,  intriguing 
against  the  peace  of  the  queen,  she  was  desirous  that 
the  electoral  prince  should  visit  the  country,  while 
Anne  was  as  determined  that  he  should  not  come,  if 
she  and  her  ministry  could  prevent  it. 

Early  in  1714,  Anne  addressed  a  powerful  remon- 
strance to  the  aged  electress,  complaining  that  ever 
since  the  Act  of  Succession  had  been  settled,  there 
had  been  a  constant  agitation,  the  object  of  which 
was  to  bring  over  a  prince  of  the  Hanoverian  house 
to  reside  in  England,  even  during  the  writer's  life. 
She  accuses  the  electress  of  having  come,  though 
perhaps  tardily,  into  this  sentiment,  which  had  its 
origin  in  political  pretensions,  and  she  adds  that,  if 
persevered  in,  it  may  end  in  consequences  dangerous 
to  the  succession  itself,  "which  is  not  secure  any 
other  ways  than  as  the  princess,  who  actually  wears 
the  crown,  maintains  her  authority  and  prerogative." 
The  royal  writer  makes  a  strong  appeal  to  the  feel- 
ings and  loyalty  of  the  dowager-electress,  adding 
such  expressions  of  confidence  in  her  good  intentions 
as  courteous  people  are  apt  to  express  to  persons  in 
whom  they  do  not  fully  trust,  and  whom  they  would 
not  altogether  offend. 

Nor  was  she  satisfied  with  this  alone.  Her  Majesty 
addressed  a  second  letter  to  George  Augustus,  as  Duke 
of  Cambridge,  impartially  expressing  her  thoughts  with 
respect  to  the  design  he  had  of  coming. into  her  king- 
dom. After  a  rotundity  of  paraphrase,  which  is  any- 
thing but  Ciceronian,  she  says,  "I  should  tell  you, 
nothing  can  be  more  dangerous  to  the  tranquillity  of 


204  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

my  dominions,  and  the  right  of  succession  in  your 
line,  and  consequently  most  disagreeable  to  me." 

These  letters  undoubtedly  helped  to  kill  the  proud 
dowager-elect  ress,  although  it  is  said  of  her  that 
"that  illustrious  lady  had  experienced  too  many 
changes  of  capricious  fortune  in  her  youth,  to  be 
slain  with  a  few  capricious  words."  The  conclusion 
is  illogical,  and  the  terms  incorrect.  The  words  were 
not  capricious,  they  were  solemn,  sober  truth;  and 
they  thwarted  her  in  one  of  her  great  desires.  She 
would  have  been  glad  to  see  the  son  of  the  electress 
take  his  place  in  the  House  of  Peers  as  Duke  of 
Cambridge ;  and  her  not  unnatural  ambition  is  mani- 
fest in  the  words,  that  "  she  cared  not  when  she  died, 
if  on  her  tomb  could  be  recorded  that  she  was  Queen 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland."  These  words  are  said 
to  have  given  great  offence  to  Queen  Anne  ;  and  some 
profit  to  Tom  d'Urfey,  who,  standing  at  her  Majesty's 
sideboard,  during  the  queen's  dessert,  after  her  three 
o'clock  dinner,  received,  it  is  said,  "a  fee  of  £$o  for 
a  stanza  which  he  composed  soon  after  Queen  Anne's 
refusal  to  invite  the  Elector  of  Hanover's  son,  for  the 
purpose  of  taking  his  place  as  Duke  of  Cambridge  in 
the  House  of  Peers."  Here  is  a  verse  of  the  doggerel 
which  delighted  the  monarch,  and  brought  guerdon  to 
the  minstrel. 

"  The  crown 's  far  too  weighty 

For  shoulders  of  eighty ; 
She  could  not  sustain  such  a  trophy. 

Her  hand,  too,  already 

Has  grown  so  unsteady, 

She  can't  hold  a  sceptre ;  — 

So  Providence  kept  her 
Away,  poor  old  dowager  Sophy ! " 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  205 

There  is  evidence  that  the  last  letters  of  Anne 
really  had  something  to  do  with  the  death  of  the 
electress.  They  had  hardly  been  received  and  read, 
when  her  health,  which  certainly  had  been  for  some 
time  failing,  grew  worse.  She  rallied,  however,  for  a 
time,  and  was  able  to  take  exercise,  but  the  blow  had 
been  given  from  which  she  never  recovered. 

Molyneux,  an  agent  of  the  Duke  of  Marlborough, 
at  Hanover,  says  he  was  on  his  way  to  the  country 
palace  of  the  electress,  when  he  was  suddenly  informed 
that  she  had  been  seized  with  mortal  illness  in  one  of 
the  garden-walks. 

"  I  ran  up  there,  and  found  her  fast  expiring  in  the 
arms  of  the  poor  electoral  princess  (Caroline,  after- 
ward queen  of  George  II.)  and  amidst  the  tears  of  a 
great  many  of  her  servants,  who  endeavoured  in  vain 
to  help  her.  I  can  give  you  no  account  of  her  illness, 
but  that  I  believe  the  chagrin  of  those  villainous  let- 
ters I  sent  you  last  post  has  been  in  a  great  measure 
the  cause  of  it.  The  rheingravine,  who  has  been 
with  her  these  fifteen  years,  has  told  me  she  never 
knew  anything  make  so  deep  an  impression  on  her, 
as  the  affair  of  the  prince's  journey,  which  I  am  sure 
she  had  to  the  last  degree  at  heart,  and  she  has  done 
me  the  honour  to  tell  me  so  twenty  times.  In  the 
midst  of  this,  however,  these  letters  arrived,  and 
these,  I  verily  believe,  have  broken  her  heart,  and 
brought  her  with  sorrow  to  the  grave.  The  letters 
were  delivered  on  Wednesday  at  seven. 

"  When  I  came  to  court  she  was  at  cards,  but  was 
so  full  of  these  letters  that  she  got  up  and  ordered 
me  to  follow  her  into  the  garden,  where  she  gave 
them  to  me  to  read,  and  walked,  and  spoke  a  great 


206  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

deal  in  relation  to  them.  I  believe  she  walked  three 
hours  that  night.  The  next  morning,  which  was 
Thursday,  I  heard  that  she  was  out  of  order,  and 
on  going  immediately  to  court,  she  ordered  me  to 
be  called  into  her  bedchamber.  She  gave  me  the 
letters  I  sent  you  to  copy ;  she  bade  me  send  them 
next  post,  and  bring  them  afterward  to  her  to  court. 
This  was  on  Friday.  In  the  morning,  on  Friday, 
they  told  me  she  was  very  well,  but  seemed  much 
chagrined.  She  was  dressed,  and  dined  with  the 
elector  as  usual.  At  four,  she  did  me  the  honour 
to  send  to  town  for  some  other  copies  of  the  same 
letters ;  and  then  she  was  still  perfectly  well.  She 
walked  and  talked  very  heartily  in  the  orangery. 
After  that,  about  six,  she  went  out  to  walk  in  the 
garden,  and  was  still  very  well.  A  shower  of  rain 
came,  and,  as  she  was  walking  pretty  fast  to  get 
to  shelter,  they  told  her  she  was  walking  a  little  too 
fast.  She  answered,  '  I  believe  I  do,'  and  dropped 
down  on  saying  these  words,  which  were  her  last. 
They  raised  her  up,  chafed  her  with  spirits,  tried 
to  bleed  her ;  but  it  was  all  in  vain,  and  when  I  came 
up,  she  was  as  dead  as  if  she  been  four  days  so."  * 

Such  was  the  end,  on  June  10,  1714,  of  a  very 
remarkable  woman  ;  a  woman  who  bore  with  more 
complacency  than  any  other  trial,  that  indeed  which 
was  scarcely  a  trial  to  her  at  all,  —  the  infidelities  of 
her  husband.  For  the  honour  of  that  husband  she 
herself  was  exceedingly  jealous.  This  was  exhibited 
on  more  than  one  occasion. 

William  III.  once  showed  his  gratitude  to  the 
Duke  of  Zell  for  political  services  rendered  in  cab- 

1  Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Marlborough. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  207 

inet  or  field,  by  conferring  on  him  the  Order  of 
the  Garter.  This  favour,  however,  rendered  the 
Electress  Sophia  furious.  She  could  bear  compla- 
cently the  infidelities  and  the  neglect  of  her  hus- 
band, but  her  mind,  full  of  reverence  for  etiquette, 
propriety,  and  the  fitness  of  things,  as  set  down 
by  the  masters  of  ceremonies,  could  not  tolerate 
that  a  younger  brother  should  wear  a  distinction 
which,  so  far  as  it  went,  elevated  him  above  the 
elder  branch  of  his  house. 

The  astute  lady  affected  to  be  unable  to  compre- 
hend the  reason  for  thus  passing  over  her  husband. 
The  reason,  perhaps,  was  that  in  principle  she  herself 
was  a  thorough  Jacobite,  and  that  Jacobite  principles 
influenced  the  elder  branch  of  a  family  which,  never- 
theless, was  not  without  some  hopes  of  rising  to  a 
throne  through  a  popular  and  national  triumph  over 
these  very  principles. 

The  electress,  it  may  be  added,  oscillated  very 
actively  between  two  extremes,  and  endeavoured  to 
maintain  friendship  with  both  parties.  She  corre- 
sponded with  the  dethroned  James  at  St.  Germains, 
and  she  wrote  very  affectionate  letters  to  his  daugh- 
ter Mary,  who,  in  succeeding  him  in  the  palace  from 
which  he  had  fled,  rolled  herself  over  the  cushions, 
on  which  he  had  so  lately  sat,  in  frolicsome  but 
unfilial  delight.  Her  letters  to  Anne  were  marked 
by  more  ceremony  than  those  addressed  to  Mary, 
and  for  this  reason :  she  respected  the  latter  as  a 
clever  woman,  but  for  Anne  she  had  a  contempt, 
ill  concealed,  and  i  a  very  thin  cloak  of  civility,  — 
deeming  her  to  be  destitute  of  ability,  and  unen- 
dowed with  personal  qualities  to  compensate  for  the 


208  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

defect.  She  had  little  more  respect  for  Anne's 
father  than  she  had  for  Anne  herself,  but  in  the 
former  case  she  hid  her  want  of  attachment  beneath 
a  greater  weight  of  ceremony. 

But  if  she  loved  neither  king  nor  queen  in  Eng- 
land, she  had  a  strong  feeling,  or  at  least  declared 
she  had,  in  favour  of  the  country  itself.  She  used 
to  speak  of  Great  Britain  as  being  her  own  native 
land,  and  expressed  a  wish  that  she  might  be  buried 
beside  her  mother  in  Westminster  Abbey.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  this  expression  was  founded  on 
affection  or  ambition,  for,  as  we  have  before  stated, 
she  declared  she  could  die  happy,  were  she  so  to  die 
as  to  warrant  her  tomb  being  distinguished  by  the 
inscription,  "Here  lies  Sophia,  Queen  of  England." 

"  It  is  my  own  country,"  she  used  to  say ;  and 
she  told  Lord  Dartmouth,  when  the  latter  was  so- 
journing at  Hanover,  that  she  had  once,  in  her 
younger  days,  been  on  the  point  of  becoming  Queen 
of  England,  by  a  marriage  which  was  said  to  have 
been  projected  between  her  and  Charles  II.  She 
added,  in  her  coarse  way,  that  England  would  have 
profited  by  such  a  marriage,  for  her  numerous  chil- 
dren would  have  rendered,  as  she  suggested,  a  dis- 
puted succession  less  complicated,  —  a  conclusion 
which  was  by  no  means  logically  arrived  at,  for 
in  England  she  might  not  have  been  the  prolific 
mother  she  was  in  Germany ;  and,  moreover,  of 
that  German  family,  the  half  went  over  to  that 
faith,  the  following  of  which  rendered  them  ineligible 
to  the  crown  of  Great  Britain. 

None  knew  better  than  the  electress  dowager  on 
what  basis  her  claims  rested.  If  she  neither  openly 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  209 

nor  privately  agitated  the  question,  she  was  not  indif- 
ferent as  to  its  consequences ;  and  though  anxious, 
she  was  quiet;  and  was  quiet  because  she  was  in 
reality  sincere.  In  a  letter,  written  by  the  electress 
on  this  very  subject,  and  quoted  by  Miss  Benger  in 
her  life  of  the  mother  of  the  electress,  there  is  the 
following  passage :  "  I  find  all  the  fine  speeches  too 
strong ;  they  are  only  fit  to  amuse  the  lower  orders, 
for  the  comparing  the  Prince  of  Wales  with  Perkin 
is  too  strong.  And  it  is  not  he  who  could  by  right 
deprive  me  of  the  crown.  If  a  Catholic  king  could 
not  succeed,  the  crown  is  mine  by  right.  Without 
that,  there  are  many  nearer  to  the  succession  than 
I  am.  So,  I  do  not  like  that  the  Prince  of  Wales 
should  be  called  bastard ;  for  I  love  the  truth." 


CHAPTER    XI. 

AHLDEN    AND    ENGLAND 

The  Neglected  Captive  of  Ahlden  —  Unnoticed  by  Her  Son-in-law, 
Except  to  Secure  Her  Property  —  Madame  von  Schulemberg  — 
The  Queen  of  Prussia  Prohibited  from  Corresponding  with  Her 
Imprisoned  Mother  —  The  Captive  Betrayed  by  Count  de  Bar  — 
Death  of  Queen  Anne  —  Anxiety  Felt  for  the  Arrival  of  King 
George  —  The  Duke  of  Marlborough's  Entry  —  Funeral  of  the 
Queen  —  Public  Entry  of  the  King  —  Adulation  of  Doctor  Young 
—  Madame  Kielmansegge,  the  New  Royal  Favourite — Horace 
Walpole's  Account  of  Her  —  "A  Hanover  Garland"  —  Ned 
Ward,  the  Tory  Poet  —  Expression  of  the  Public  Opinion  —  The 
Duchess  of  Kendal  Bribed  by  Lord  Bolingbroke  —  Bribery  and 
Corruption  General  —  Abhorrence  of  Parade  by  the  King. 

DURING  marriage  festivals  and  court  fetes  held  to 
celebrate  some  step  in  greatness,  Sophia  Dorothea 
continued  to  vegetate  in  Ahlden.  She  was  politi- 
cally dead ;  and  even  in  the  domestic  occurrences 
of  her  family,  events  in  which  a  mother  might  be 
gracefully  allowed  to  have  a  part,  she  enjoyed  no 
share.  The  marriages  of  her  children,  and  the 
births  of  their  children,  were  not  officially  com- 
municated to  her.  She  was  left  to  learn  them 
through  chance  or  the  courtesy  of  individuals. 

Her  daughter  was  now  the  second  Queen  of  Prus- 
sia, but  the  king  cared  not  to  exercise  his  influence 
in  behalf  of  his  unfortunate  mother-in-law.  Not  that 
he  was  unconcerned  with  respect  to  her.  His  con- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  211 

sort  was  heiress  to  property  over  which  her  mother 
had  control,  and  Frederick  was  not  tranquil  of  mind 
until  this  property  had  been  secured  as  the  indis- 
putable inheritance  of  his  wife.  He  was  earnest 
enough  in  his  correspondence  with  Sophia  Dorothea, 
until  this  consummation  was  arrived  at ;  and  when 
he  held  the  writings  which  secured  the  succession  of 
certain  portions  of  the  property  of  the  duchess  on  his 
consort,  he  ceased  to  trouble  himself  further  with  any 
question  connected  with  the  unfortunate  prisoner ; 
except,  indeed,  that  he  forbade  his  wife  to  hold  any 
further  intercourse  with  her  mother,  by  letter,  or 
otherwise.  This  prohibition  was  by  far  too  obedi- 
ently observed,  and  Sophia  Dorothea  was  in  this 
much  like  old  King  Lear,  that  by  endowing  a  daugh- 
ter she  lost  a  child. 

Few  and  trivial  are  the  incidents  told  of  her  long 
captivity.  The  latter  had  been  embittered  in  1 703, 
by  the  knowledge  that  Mile,  von  Schulemberg  was 
the  mother  of  another  daughter,  Margaret  Gertrude, 
of  whom  the  elector  was  the  father.  This  child,  of 
whom  little  is  known,  but  of  whom  we  shall  have  to 
speak  in  a  future  reign,  was  ten  years  younger  than 
her  sister,  Petronilla  Melusina,  who  subsequently 
figured  at  the  court  of  George  II.  as  Countess  of 
Walsingham,  and  who,  as  the  careless  and  uncared- 
for  wife  of  Philip  Stanhope,  Earl  of  Chesterfield,  gave, 
nevertheless,  very  considerable  trouble  to  that  cele- 
brated personage,  who  had  the  spirit  to  be  a  patriot, 
and  the  tact  to  be  a  gentleman,  but  who  had  neither 
the  tact  nor  the  principle  to  be  a  Christian.  In  the 
latter  respect,  the  parties  were,  for  a  time  at  least, 
not  ill-matched. 


212  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

Previous  to  the  prohibition  laid  on  his  wife  by  the 
King  of  Prussia,  an  epistolary  intercourse  had  been 
privately  maintained  between  the  prisoner  and  her 
daughter.  Such  intercourse  had  never  received  the 
king's  sanction  ;  and  when  it  came  to  his  knowledge, 
at  the  period  of  the  settlement  of  part  of  the  maternal 
property  on  the  daughter,  he  peremptorily  ordered  its 
cessation.  It  had  been  maintained  chiefly  by  means 
of  a  Chevalier  de  Bar ;  Ludwig,  a  privy  counsellor  at 
Berlin ;  Frederick,  a  page  of  the  queen's ;  and  a 
bailiff  of  the  castle  of  Ahlden.  There  were  too  many 
confederates  in  a  matter  so  simple,  and  the  whole  of 
them  betrayed  the  poor  lady,  for  whom  they  professed 
to  act.  The  most  important  agent  was  the  chevalier  : 
in  him  the  duchess  confided  longest,  and  in  his  want 
of  faith  she  was  the  last  to  believe.  He  had  intro- 
duced himself  to  her  by  sending  her  presents  of  snuff, 
no  unusual  present  to  a  lady  in  those  days,  —  though 
it  is  pretended  that  these  gifts  bore  a  peculiar  signif- 
ication, known  only  to  the  donor  and  the  recipient. 
They  probably  had  less  meaning  than  the  presents 
forwarded  to  her  by  her  daughter,  consisting  now  of 
her  portrait,  another  time  of  a  watch,  or  some  other 
trinket,  which  served  to  pass  a  letter  with  it,  in  which 
were  filial  injunctions  to  the  poor  mother  to  be  patient 
and  resigned,  and  to  put  no  trust  in  the  Count  de 
Bar. 

The  prisoner  did  not  heed  the  counsel,  but  con- 
tinued to  confide  in  a  man  who  was  prodigal  of 
promise,  and  traitorous  of  performance.  Her  hopes 
were  fixed  upon  escaping,  but  they  were  foiled  by 
the  watchfulness  of  noble  spies,  who  exultingly  told  her 
that  her  husband  was  a  king.  And  it  is  asserted  that 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  213 

she  might  have  been  a  recognised  queen  if  she  would 
but  have  confessed  that  she  had  failed  in  obedience 
toward  her  husband.  It  is  certain  that  a  renewed,  but 
it  may  not  have  been  an  honest,  attempt  at  reconcilia- 
tion was  made  just  previous  to  the  accession  of 
George  I.,  but  the  old  reply  fell  from  the  prisoner's 
lips  :  "  If  I  am  guilty,  I  am  not  worthy  of  him  :  if 
I  am  innocent,  he  is  not  worthy  of  me." 

I  have  already  noticed  the  death  of  the  Electress 
Sophia,  and  the  causes  of  that  death,  — in  1714.  It 
was  followed  very  shortly  after  by  the  demise  of 
Queen  Anne.  This  event  had  taken  all  parties 
somewhat  by  surprise.  They  stood  face  to  face,  as 
it  were,  over  the  dying  queen.  The  Jacobites  were 
longing  for  her  to  name  her  brother  as  her  successor, 
whom  they  would  have  proclaimed  at  once  at  the 
head  of  the  army.  The  Hanoverian  party  were 
feverish  with  fears  and  anticipations,  but  they  had 
the  regency  dressed  up,  and  ready  in  the  background, 
and  Secretary  Craggs,  booted  and  spurred,  was  mak- 
ing such  haste  as  could  then  be  made,  on  his  road  to 
Hanover,  to  summon  King  George.  The  Jacobite 
portion  of  the  cabinet  was  individually  bold  in  resolv- 
ing what  ought  to  be  done,  but  they  were,  bodily, 
afraid  of  the  responsibility  of  doing  it.  Each  man  of 
each  faction  had  his  king's  name  ready  upon  his  lips, 
awaiting  only  that  the  lethargy  of  the  queen  should 
be  succeeded  by  irretrievable  death,  to  give  it  joyful 
utterance.  Anne  died  on  the  ist  of  August,  1714; 
the  Jacobites  drew  a  breath  of  hesitation ;  and  in  the 
meantime,  the  active  Whigs  instantly  proclaimed 
King  George,  gave  Addison  the  mission  of  announc- 
ing the  demise  of  one  sovereign  to  another,  who  was 


214  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

that  sovereign's  successor,  and  left  the  Jacobites  to 
their  vexation,  and  their  threatened  redress. 

Lord  Berkley  was  sent  with  the  fleet  to  Orange 
Polder,  in  Holland,  there  to  bring  over  the  new  king, 
but  Craggs  had  not  only  taken  a  very  long  time  to 
carry  his  invitation  to  the  monarch,  but  the  husband 
of  Sophia,  when  he  received  it,  showed  no  hot  haste 
to  take  advantage  thereof.  The  Earl  of  Dorset  was 
despatched  over  to  press  his  immediate  coming,  on 
the  ground  of  the  affectionate  impatience  of  his  new 
subjects.  The  king  was  no  more  moved  thereby  than 
he  was  by  the  first  announcement  of  Lord  Clarendon, 
the  English  ambassador,  at  Hanover.  On  the  night 
of  the  5th  of  August,  that  envoy  had  received  an  ex- 
press, announcing  the  demise  of  the  queen.  At  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  he  hastened  with  what  he 
supposed  the  joyful  intelligence  to  Herrnhausen,  and 
caused  George  Louis  to  be  aroused,  that  he  might  be 
the  first  to  salute  him  as  king.  The  new  monarch 
yawned,  expressed  himself  vexed,  and  went  to  sleep 
again  as  calmly  as  any  serene  highness.  In  the 
morning,  some  one  delicately  hinted,  as  if  to  encour- 
age the  husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea  in  staying  where 
he  was,  that  the  presbyterian  party  in  England  was 
a  dangerous  regicidal  party.  "  Not  so,"  said  George, 
who  seemed  to  be  satisfied  that  there  was  no  peril  in 
the  new  greatness  ;  "  Not  so  ;  I  have  nothing  to  fear 
from  the  king-killers  ;  they  are  all  on  my  side."  But 
still  he  tarried  ;  one  day  decreeing  the  abolition  of 
the  excise,  the  next  ordering,  like  King  Arthur  in 
Fielding's  tragedy,  all  the  insolvent  debtors  to  be 
released  from  prison.  While  thus  engaged,  London 
was  busy  with  various  pleasant  occupations. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  215 

On  the  3d  of  August,  the  late  queen  was  opened ; 
and  on  the  following  day  her  bowels  were  buried,  with 
as  much  ceremony  as  they  deserved,  in  Westminster 
Abbey.  The  day  subsequent  to  this  ceremony,  the 
Duke  of  Marlborough,  who  had  been  in  voluntary 
exile  abroad,  and  whose  office  in  command  of  the 
imperial  arms  had  been  held  for  a  short  time,  and 
not  discreditably,  by  George  Louis,  made  a  triumphant 
entry  into  London.  The  triumph,  however,  was 
marred  by  the  sudden  breaking  down  of  his  coach  at 
Temple  Bar,  —  an  accident  ominous  of  his  not  again 
rising  to  power.  The  Lords  and  Commons  then  sent 
renewed  assurances  of  loyalty  to  Hanover,  and 
renewed  prayers  that  the  lord  there  would  doff  his 
electoral  cap,  and  come  and  try  his  kingly  crown. 
To  quicken  this,  the  Lower  House,  on  the  tenth,  voted 
him  the  same  revenues  the  late  queen  had  enjoyed,  — 
excepting  those  arising  from  the  duchy  of  Cornwall, 
which  were,  by  law,  invested  in  the  Prince  of  Wales. 
On  the  1 3th,  Craggs  arrived  in  town  to  herald  the 
king's  coming  ;  and  on  the  I4th,  the  Hanoverian 
party  were  delighted  to  hear  that  on  the  Pretender 
repairing  from  Louvain  to  Versailles,  to  implore  of 
Louis  to  acknowledge  him  publicly  as  king,  the 
French  monarch  had  pleaded,  in  bar,  his  engagements 
with  the  house  of  Hanover,  and  that  thereon  the  Pre- 
tender had  returned  dispirited  to  Louvain.  On  the 
24th  of  the  month,  the  late  queen's  body  was  privately 
buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  by  order  of  her  suc- 
cessor, who  appeared  to  have  a  dread  of  finding  the 
old  lady  of  his  young  love  yet  upon  the  earth.  This 
order  was  followed  by  another,  which  ejected  from 
their  places  many  officials  who  had  hoped  to  retain 


216          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

them,  —  and  chief  of  these  was  Bolingbroke.  Lon- 
don then  became  excited  at  hearing  that  the  king  had 
arrived  at  The  Hague  on  the  5th  of  September.  It 
was  calculated  that  the  nearer  he  got  to  his  kingdom, 
the  more  accelerated  would  be  his  speed  ;  but  George 
was  not  to  be  hurried.  Madame  Kielmansegge,  who 
shared  what  was  called  his  regard  with  Mile,  von 
Schulemberg,  had  been  retarded  in  her  departure  from 
Hanover  by  the  heaviness  of  her  debts.  The  daughter 
of  the  Countess  von  Platen  would  not  have  been 
worthy  of  her  mother,  had  she  suffered  herself  to  be 
long  detained  by  such  a  trifle.  She,  accordingly,  gave 
her  creditors  the  slip,  set  off  to  Holland,  and  was 
received  with  a  heavy  sort  of  delight,  by  the  king.  The 
exemplary  couple  tarried  alone  a  week  at  The  Hague  ; 
and  on  the  i6th  September,  George  and  his  retinue 
set  sail  for  England.  Between  that  day  and  the  day 
of  his  arrival  at  Greenwich,  the  heads  of  the  regency 
were  busy  in  issuing  decrees,  —  now  it  was  for  the 
prohibition  of  fireworks  on  the  day  of  his  Majesty's 
entry ;  next,  against  the  admission  of  unprivileged 
carriages  into  Greenwich  Park  on  the  king's  arrival ; 
and,  lastly,  one  promising  £  100,000  to  any  loyal 
subject  who  might  be  lucky  enough  to  catch  the 
Pretender  in  England,  and  who  would  bring  him  a 
prisoner  to  London. 

On  the  1 8th  of  September,  the  king  landed  at 
Greenwich ;  and  on  the  two  following  days,  while 
he  sojourned  there,  he  was  waited  on  by  various 
officials,  who  went  smiling  to  the  foot  of  the  throne, 
and  came  away  frowning  at  the  cold  treatment  they 
received  there.  They  who  thought  themselves  the 
most  secure  endured  the  most  disgraceful  falls, 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  217 

especially  the  Duke  of  Ormond,  who,  as  captain- 
general,  had  been  three  parts  inclined  to  proclaim 
the  Pretender.  He  repaired  in  gorgeous  array  to 
do  homage  to  King  George ;  but  the  king  would  only 
receive  his  staff  of  office,  and  would  not  see  the  ex- 
bearer  of  it ;  who  returned  home  with  one  dignity 
the  less,  and  for  George  one  enemy  the  more. 

The  public  entry  into  London  on  the  2Oth  was 
splendid,  and  so  was  the  court  holden  at  St.  James's 
on  the  following  day.  A  lively  incident,  however, 
marked  the  proceedings  of  this  first  court.  Colonel 
Chudleigh,  in  the  crowd,  branded  Mr.  Allworth, 
M.  P.  for  New  Windsor,  as  a  Jacobite ;  whereupon 
they  both  left  the  palace,  went  in  a  coach  to  Maryle- 
bone  Fields,  and  there  fought  a  duel,  in  which  Mr. 
Allworth  was  killed  on  the  spot.  This  was  the  first 
libation  of  blood  offered  to  the  king. 

Were  it  not  that  we  know  how  much  more  in- 
tensely the  poets  love  the  Muses  than  they  care  for 
truth,  we  might  be  puzzled  in  our  endeavours  to 
reconcile  the  rhyming  records  of  England's  welcome 
to  George  I.  with  the  narrations  given  in  simple 
prose  by  eye-witnesses  of  the  incidents  which  they 
narrate. 

No  poet  deplored  —  that  is,  no  poet  affected  to  de- 
plore —  the  decease  of  Anne,  with  such  profundity  of 
jingling  grief,  as  Young.  He  had  not  then  achieved 
a  name,  and  he  was  eagerly  desirous  to  build  up  a 
fortune.  His  threnodia  on  the  death  of  Queen  Anne 
is  a  fine  piece  of  measured  maudlin ;  but  the  author 
appears  to  have  bethought  himself,  before  he  had 
expended  half  his  stock  of  sorrows,  that  there  would 
be  more  profit  in  welcoming  a  living  than  bewailing 


2l8  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

a  defunct  monarch.  Accordingly,  wiping  up  his 
tears,  and  arraying  his  face  in  the  blandest  of  smiles, 
he  thus  falls  to  the  double  task  of  recording  the 
reception  of  George,  and  registering  his  merits.  He 
first,  however,  apologetically  states,  as  his  warrant 
for  turning  from  weeping  for  Anne  to  cheering  for 
George,  that  all  the  sorrow  in  the  world  cannot 
reverse  doom,  that  groans  cannot  "unlock  th'  inex- 
orable tomb ; "  that  a  fond  indulgence  of  woe  is  sad 
folly,  for,  from  such  a  course,  he  exclaims,  with 
a  fine  eye  to  a  poet's  profit,  — 

"  What  fruit  can  rise  or  what  advantage  flow !  " 

So,  turning  his  face  from  the  tomb  of  Anne  to  the 
throne  of  George,  he  grandiosely  waves  his  hat,  and 
thus  he  sings : 

"  Welcome,  great  stranger,  to  Britannia's  throne ! 
Nor  let  thy  country  think  thee  all  her  own. 
Of  thy  delay  how  oft  did  we  complain ! 
Our  hope  reach'd  out  and  met  thee  on  the  main. 
With  pray'r  we  smooth  the  billows  for  thy  feet, 
With  ardent  wishes  fill  thy  swelling  sheet ; 
And  when  thy  foot  took  place  on  Albion's  shore, 
We,  bending,  bless'd  the  gods  and  ask'd  no  more ! 
What  hand  but  thine  should  conquer  and  compose, 
Join  those  whom  interest  joins,  and  chase  our  foes, 
Repel  the  daring  youth's  presumptuous  aim, 
And  by  his  rival's  greatness  give  him  fame? 
Now,  in  some  foreign  court  he  may  sit  down, 
And  quit  without  a  blush  the  British  crown ; 
Secure  his  honour,  though  he  lose  his  store, 
And  take  a  lucky  moment  to  be  poor." 

This  sneer  at  the  Pretender  is  as  contemptible  as 
the   flattery  of   George   is  gross ;   and  the  picture 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  219 

of  an  entire  nation  on  its  knees,  blessing  Olympus, 
and  bidding  the  gods  to  restrain  all  further  gifts,  is 
as  magnificent  a  mixture  of  bombast  and  blasphemy 
as  ever  was  made  up  by  venal  poet.  But  here  is 
more  of  it : 

"  Nor  think,  great  sir,  now  first  at  this  late  hour, 
In  Britain's  favour  you  exert  your  power. 
To  us,  far  back  in  time,  I  joy  to  trace 
The  numerous  tokens  of  your  princely  grace ; 
Whether  you  chose  to  thunder  on  the  Rhine, 
Inspire  grave  councils,  or  in  courts  to  shine, 
In  the  more  scenes  your  genius  was  display'd, 
The  greater  debt  was  on  Britannia  laid : 
They  all  conspir'd  this  mighty  man  to  raise, 
And  your  new  subjects  proudly  share  the  praise." 

Such  is  the  record  of  a  rhymer :  Walpole,  in  plain 
and  truthful  prose,  tells  a  very  different  story.  He 
informs  us,  that  the  London  mob  —  no  Jacobites,  be 
it  remembered,  but,  to  paraphrase  Nell  Gwynne's 
celebrated  phrase,  "  a  good  Protestant  mob  "  —  were 
highly  diverted  at  the  importation  by  the  king  of 
his  uncommon  seraglio  of  ugly  women.  "  They  were 
food,"  he  says,  "  for  all  the  venom  of  the  Jacobites," 
and  so  far  from  Britain  thanking  him  for  coming 
himself,  or  for  bringing  with  him  these  numerous 
tokens  of  his  princely  grace,  "nothing  could  be 
grosser  than  the  ribaldry  vomited  out  in  lampoons, 
libels,  and  every  channel  of  abuse,  against  the  sov- 
ereign and  the  new  court,  and  chanted  even  in  their 
hearing  about  the  public  streets." 

As  for  the  great  balance  of  debt  which  Young 
struck  against  poor  Britannia  for  the  outlay  of  genius 


220  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

on  the  part  of  George*  the  creditor  did  not  fail  to 
exact  payment,  with  a  large  amount  of  compound  in- 
terest, both  out  of  the  national  purse  and  the  national 
peerage.  Mile,  von  Schulemberg  was  created  Duch- 
ess of  Kendal.  "The  younger  Mile,  von  Schulem- 
berg, who  came  over  with  her,  and  was  created 
Countess  of  Walsingham,  passed  for  her  niece,  but 
was  so  like  the  king,  that  it  is  not  very  credible  that 
the  duchess,  who  had  affected  to  pass  for  cruel,  had 
waited  for  the  left-handed  marriage."  Lady  Walsing- 
ham, as  previously  said,  was  afterward  married  to  the 
celebrated  Philip  Stanhope,  Earl  of  Chesterfield. 

To  the  Duchess  of  Kendal  —  George  (who  was  so 
shocked  at  the  infidelity  of  which  his  wife  was  alleged 
to  be  guilty)  was  to  the  mistress  as  inconstant  as  to 
the  wife  he  had  been  untrue.  He  set  aside  the 
former,  to  put  in  her  place  Madame  Kielmansegge, 
called,  like  her  mother,  Countess  von  Platen.  On 
the  death  of  her  husband  in  1721,  he  raised  her  to 
the  rank  of  Countess  of  Leinster  in  Ireland,  Count- 
ess of  Darlington  and  Baroness  of  Brentford  in  Eng- 
land. Coxe  says  of  her,  that  her  power  over  the  king 
was  not  equal  to  that  of  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  but 
her  character  for  rapacity  was  not  inferior.  Horace 
Walpole  has  graphically  portrayed  Lady  Darlington 
in  the  following  passage  : 

"  Lady  Darlington,  whom  I  saw  at  my  mother's  in 
my  infancy,  and  whom  I  remember  by  being  terrified 
at  her  enormous  figure,  was  as  corpulent  and  ample 
as  the  duchess  was  long  and  emaciated.  The  fierce 
black  eyes,  large,  and  rolling  beneath  two  lofty  arched 
eyebrows,  two  acres  of  cheeks  spread  with  crimson, 
an  ocean  of  neck  that  overflowed,  and  was  not  distin- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  221 

guished  from,  the  lower  part  of  her  body,  and  no  part 
restrained  by  stays  —  no  wonder  that  a  child  dreaded 
such  an  ogress." 

But  Parnassus  itself  was  far  from  being  unanimous 
in  welcoming  the  first  king  of  the  house  of  Bruns- 
wick. The  Jacobite  lyrists  mounted  Pegasus,  and 
made  him  kick  rather  menacingly  against  the  Hano- 
verian succession.  The  Hanover  poets,  indeed,  were 
the  first  in  the  field.  Thus,  Anne  died  on  the  ist 
of  August,  1714,  and  six  days  afterward  the  violent 
Whig  Flying  Post  suppressed  its  columns  of  intel- 
ligence in  order  to  make  room  for  piles  of  political 
poetry.  Among  the  rest  was  "  A  Hanover  Garland," 
in  which  the  following  flower  of  poetry  was  wreathed : 

"  Keep  out,  keep  out  H(anover)'s  line, 
'Tis  only  J(ame)s  has  right  divine, 
So  Romish  parsons  cant  and  whine, 

And  sure  we  must  believe  them. 
But  if  their  prince  can't  come  in  peace 
Their  stock  will  every  day  decrease, 
And  they  will  ne'er  see  Perkin's  face, 
So  their  false  hopes  deceive  them." 

Against  these  tilters  the  first  Tory  poet  who  ap- 
peared in  the  field  was  Ned  Ward,  the  publican,  who 
took  advantage  of  the  public  return  of  the  Duke  of 
Marlborough  from  his  voluntary  exile,  to  ridicule  the 
circumstance,  and  the  parties  engaged  in  the  proces- 
sion, as  seditious  and  republican  in  character.  Ned 
satirised  the  "  Low-church  elders,"  and  added,  against 
the  Whig  mercantile  community  : 

"  Next  these  who,  like  to  blazing  stars, 
Portend  domestic  feuds  and  wars, 
Came  managers  and  bank-directors, 
King-killers,  monarchy-electors, 


222  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

And  votaries  for  lord-protectors, 
That,  had  old  subtle  Satan  spread 
His  net  o'er  all  the  cavalcade, 
He  might  at  one  surprising  pull 
Have  fill'd  his  lower  dominion  full  — 
Of  atheists,  rebels,  Whigs,  and  traitors, 
Reforming  knaves  and  regulators ; 
And  eased  at  once  this  land  of  more 
And  greater  plagues  than  Egypt  bore." 

The  mob  had  a  strong  Tory  leaven  at  this  time, 
and  among  the  multitude  circulated  a  mass  of  broad- 
sides and  ballads,  of  so  openly  a  seditious  character, 
that  the  power  of  the  law  was  stringently  applied  to 
suppress  the  evil.  Before  the  year  was  out,  half  the 
provincial  towns  in  England  were  infected  with  sedi- 
tious sentiments  against  the  Whig  government,  which 
had  brought  in  a  king  whose  way  of  life  was  a  scandal 
to  them.  This  feeling  of  contempt  for  both  king 
and  government  was  wide  as  well  as  deep,  and  it  was 
so  craftily  made  use  of  by  the  leaders  of  public  opin- 
ion, that  before  George  had  been  three  months  upon 
the  throne,  the  "High-church  rabble,"  as  the  Tory 
party  was  called,  in  various  country  towns,  were 
violent  in  their  proceedings  against  the  government ; 
and  at  Axmister,  in  Devonshire,  shouted  for  the  Pre- 
tender, and  drank  his  health  as  King  of  England. 
The  conduct  of  George  to  his  wife,  Sophia  Dorothea, 
was  as  satirically  dealt  with,  in  the  way  of  censure, 
as  any  of  his  delinquencies,  and  his  character  as  a 
husband  was  not  forgotten  in  the  yearly  tumults  of 
his  time,  which  broke  out  on  every  recurring  anniver- 
sary of  Queen  Anne's  birthday  (the  23d  of  April),  to 
the  end  of  his  reign. 

If  the  new  king  was  dissatisfied  with  his  new  sub- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  223 

jects,  he  liked  as  little  the  manners  of  England. 
"This  is  a  strange  country,"  said  his  Majesty  :  "the 
first  morning  after  my  arrival  at  St.  James's,  I  looked 
out  of  the  window,  and  saw  a  park,  with  walks,  a 
canal,  and  so  forth,  which  they  told  me  were  mine. 
The  next  day,  Lord  Chetwynd,  the  ranger  of  my 
park,  sent  me  a  fine  brace  of  carp  out  of  my  canal, 
and  I  was  told  that  I  must  give  five  guineas  to  Lord 
Chetwynd's  servant,  for  bringing  me  my  own  carp, 
out  of  my  own  canal,  in  my  own  park  ! " 

The  monarch's  mistresses  loved  as  much  to  receive 
money  as  the  king  himself  loved  little  to  part  from 
it.  The  Duchess  of  Kendal's  rapacity  has  been  men- 
tioned :  one  instance  of  it  is  mentioned  by  Coxe,  on 
the  authority  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  to  the  effect 
that  "the  restoration  of  Lord  Bolingbroke  was  the 
work  of  the  Duchess  of  Kendal.  He  gained  the 
duchess  by  a  present  of  £i  1,000,  and  obtained  a 
promise  to  use  her  influence  over  the  king  for  the 
purpose  of  forwarding  his  complete  restoration." 
Horace  Walpole  states  that  the  duchess  was  no 
friend  of  Sir  Robert,  and  wished  to  make  Lord  Bol- 
ingbroke minister  in  his  room.  The  rapacious  mis- 
tress was  jealous  of  Sir  Robert's  credit  with  the 
monarch.  Monarch  and  minister  transacted  busi- 
ness through  the  medium  of  indifferent  Latin ;  the 
king  not  being  able  to  speak  English,  and  Sir  Robert, 
like  a  country  gentleman  of  England,  knowing  noth- 
ing of  either  German  or  French.  "  It  was  much  talked 
of,"  says  the  lively  writer  of  the  reminiscences  of  the 
courts  of  the  first  two  Georges,  "that  Sir  Robert, 
detecting  one  of  the  Hanoverian  ministers  in  some 
trick  or  falsehood  before  the  king's  face,  had  the  firm- 


224  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

ness  to  say  to  the  German,  '  Mentiris  impudentis- 
sime  ! '  The  good-humoured  monarch  only  laughed, 
as  he  often  did  when  Sir  Robert  complained  to  him 
of  his  Hanoverians  selling  places,  nor  would  be  per- 
suaded that  it  was  not  the  practice  of  the  English 
court."  The  singularity  of  this  complaint  is,  that  it 
was  made  by  a  minister  who  was  notorious  for  com- 
placently saying  that  "  Every  man  in  the  House  of 
Commons  had  his  price." 

The  king  laughed,  simply  because  he  loved  to  lead 
an  untroubled  life.  The  parade  of  royalty  was  abhor- 
rent to  him,  solely  on  the  same  account.  To  the 
theatre  he  went  in  no  state ;  "  nor  did  he  sit  in  the 
stage-box,  nor  forward,  but  behind  the  Duchess  of 
Kendal  and  Lady  Walsingham,  in  the  second  box, 
afterward  allotted  to  the  maids  of  honour."  This 
spectacle  must  have  been  edifying  to  the  "house," 
yet  one  not  likely  to  induce  love  or  loyalty  for  the 
house  of  Brunswick,  as  then  represented.  A  king 
living  in  open  violation  of  God's  commandments, 
coldly  calling  on  his  people  to  witness  the  unclean- 
ness  of  his  sin,  and  at  the  same  time  shutting  up  his 
wife  in  close  captivity,  for  no  better  reason,  appar- 
ently, than  that  her  temper  was  incompatible  with 
his,  —  which  was  likely  enough,  —  was  surely  a  sight 
to  perplex  those  very  gods  to  whom,  Young  said,  all 
Britain  bent  in  humble  thankfulness  for  such  a  bless- 
ing. I  can  fancy  Dan  Mercury  looking  down  upon 
such  a  sight,  and  exclaiming,  as  he  saw  the  jumbling 
of  triumphs  for  the  unrighteous,  oppression  for  the 
innocent,  and  praise  offered  by  the  vain  to  the  wicked, 
that  in  this  lower  world,  as  Stephen  Blackpool  has 
since  remarked,  "  it  was  all  muddle ! " 


CHAPTER   XII. 

CROWN    AND    GRAVE 

Arrival  of  Caroline,  Princess  of  Wales  —  The  King  Dines  at  the 
Guildhall  —  Proclamation  of  the  Pretender  —  Counter-procla- 
mations —  Government  Prosecutions  —  A  Mutiny  among  the 
Troops  —  Impeachment  of  the  Duke  of  Ormondof  High  Treason 
—  Punishment  of  Political  Offenders  —  Failure  of  Rebellion  in 
Scotland  —  Punishment  for  Wearing  Oak-boughs  —  Riot  at  the 
Mug-house  in  Salisbury  Court,  and  Its  Fatal  Consequences  — 
The  Prince  of  Wales  Removed  from  the  Palace  —  Dissensions 
between  the  King  and  the  Prince  —  Attempt  on  the  Life  of  King 
George  —  Marriage  of  the  King's  Illegitimate  Daughter  —  The 
South  Sea  Bubble  —  Birth  of  Prince  William,  the  Butcher  of 
Culloden  —  Death  of  the  Duchess  of  Zell  —  Stricter  Imprison- 
ment of  the  Captive  of  Ahlden  —  Her  Calm  Death  —  A  New 
Royal  Favourite,  Mrs.  Brett  —  Death  of  the  King. 

WHILE  Sophia  Dorothea  continued  to  linger  in  her 
prison,  her  husband  and  son,  with  the  mistresses  of 
the  former  and  the  wife  of  the  latter,  were  enjoying 
the  advantages  and  anxieties  which  surround  a  throne. 
The  wife  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  Caroline,  arrived  at 
Margate  on  the  i$th  of  October.  She  was  accom- 
panied by  her  two  eldest  daughters,  Anne  and  Amelia. 
Mother  and  children  rested  during  one  day  in  the 
town  where  they  had  landed,  slept  one  night  at 
Rochester,  and  arrived  at  St.  James's  on  the  I5th. 
The  royal  coronation  took  place  in  Westminster 
Abbey  on  the  2Oth  of  the  same  month.  Amid 
the  pomp  of  the  occasion,  no  one  appears  to  have 

225 


226  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

thought  of  her  who  should  have  been  queen  consort. 
There  was  much  splendour  and  some  calamity,  for  as 
the  procession  was  sweeping  by,  several  people  were 
killed  by  the  fall  of  scaffolding  in  the  Palace  Yard. 
The  new  king  entered  the  Abbey  amid  the  cheers 
and  screams  of  an  excited  multitude. 

Three  days  after,  the  monarch,  with  the  Prince 
and  Princess  of  Wales,  dined  with  the  lord  mayor 
and  corporation  in  the  Guildhall,  London,  and  there 
George  performed  the  first  grateful  service  to  his 
people,  by  placing  a  thousand  guineas  in  the  hands 
of  the  sheriffs,  for  the  relief  of  the  wretched  debtors 
then  immured  in  the  neighbouring  horrible  prisons  of 
Newgate  and  the  Fleet. 

Within  a  month,  the  general  festivities  were  a 
little  marred  by  the  proclamation  of  the  Pretender, 
dated  from  Lorraine,  wherein  he  laid  claim  to  the 
throne  which  George  was  declared  to  have  usurped. 
At  this  period  the  Duke  of  Lorraine  was  a  sovereign 
prince,  maintaining  an  envoy  at  our  court ;  but  the 
latter  was  ordered  to  withdraw  from  the  country 
immediately  after  the  arrival  of  the  "  Lorraine  proc- 
lamation," by  the  French  mail.  Already  George  I. 
began  to  feel  that  on  the  throne  he  was  destined  to 
enjoy  less  quiet  than  his  consort  in  her  prison. 

The  counter-proclamations  made  in  this  country, 
chiefly  on  account  of  the  Jacobite  riots  at  Oxford  and 
some  other  places,  were  made  up  of  nonsense  and  ma- 
lignity, and  were  well  calculated  to  make  a  good 
cause  wear  the  semblance  of  a  bad  one.  They 
decreed,  or  announced,  thanksgiving  on  the  2Oth  of 
January,  for  the  accession  of  the  house  of  Hanover ; 
and,  to  show  what  a  portion  of  the  people  had  to  be 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  227 

thankful  for,  they  ordered  a  rigorous  execution  of 
the  laws  against  papists,  nonjurors,  and  dissenters 
generally,  who  were  assumed  to  be,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  disaffected  to  the  reigning  house. 

The  government  was  earnest  in  its  intentions. 
Vine,  a  comedian,  was  prosecuted  for  a  libel  con- 
tained in  his  "  Reasons  humbly  offered  to  the  Parlia- 
ment for  abrogating  the  observation  of  the  3<Dth  of 
January."  But  this  was  an  innocent  libel  enough, 
compared  with  others  such  as  that  of  Hornby's,  in  his 
"  Advice  to  the  Freethinkers  of  England,"  in  which 
it  was  affirmed  that  the  Whig  government  would  over- 
turn the  constitution  in  Church  and  state,  alter  the 
law  of  limitations  in  the  power  of  the  Crown,  establish 
a  standing  army,  crush  public  liberty,  and  "  encourage 
the  people  to  abuse  the  memory  of  good  Queen 
Anne."  A  reward  of  a  thousand  pounds  was  con- 
ferred on  the  discoverer  of  the  author  of  this  libel. 
Some  of  its  assertions  appeared,  however,  to  be 
justified  in  the  king's  first  proclamation  for  electing 
a  new  Parliament.  In  this  document  his  Majesty 
charged  the  late  House  of  Commons  with  being 
Jacobitical,  and  desired  his  subjects  to  elect  men  of 
an  opposite  tendency.  His  desire  was  tolerably  well 
obeyed ;  but  when  the  king  told  the  new  Parliament 
that  the  public  -debt  had  increased  in  peace,  and 
diminished  during  war,  —  and  when  the  Commons, 
in  their  address,  encouraged  the  monarch  in  his  war- 
like propensities,  —  the  freethinkers  were  more  ob- 
stinate than  ever  in  their  opinion  that  liberty  was 
doomed  to  die  beneath  the  heels  of  a  standing  army. 

Not  that  much  pains  could  be  said  to  have  been 
taken  by  the  government  to  conciliate  the  army. 


228  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

On  the  first  anniversary  of  the  king's  birthday,  the 
28th  of  May,  the  First  Regiment  of  Guards,  and 
divisions  of  other  regiments,  broke  out  into  open 
mutiny,  on  the  ground  that  they  were  furnished  with 
clothes  and  linen  not  fit  to  be  worn  on  the  royal 
birthday.  The  Duke  of  Marlborough,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded Ormond  as  captain-general,  sallied  from  his 
house  in  the  Mall,  and  made  a  speech  to  the  soldiers 
in  the  park.  But  some  of  the  men  stripped  off  their 
jackets  and  shirts,  and  flung  them  over  the  wall  of 
the  duke's  garden  and  of  that  behind  St.  James's 
Palace,  while  others,  hoisting  the  linen  garments  on 
poles,  paraded  them  about  the  streets,  exclaiming, 
"  Look  at  our  Hanover  shirts  !  "  Reparation  was 
promised,  the  army  agents  and  tradesmen  were 
blamed,  and  the  men  were  enjoined  to  burn  clothes 
and  shirts  in  front  of  Whitehall, — an  order  which 
they  obeyed  with  alacrity.  Amid  it  all,  the  little 
Princess  Caroline,  youngest  daughter  of  the  Prince 
and  Princess  of  Wales,  who  had  arrived  only  two 
days  before  in  London,  took  her  first  drive  in  public. 
Her  little  Highness  must  have  been  startled  at  the 
contrast  between  the  noisy  metropolis  and  the  quiet 
city  of  Hanover ;  the  streets  of  the  latter  all  tran- 
quillity, those  of  the  former  full  of  prostrate  Whigs, 
knocked  down  by  strong-armed  Tories  for  refusing  to 
join  in  the  shout  of  "  High  Church  and  the  Duke  of 
Ormond." 

The  duke  gained  little  by  his  popularity,  for  he,  in 
common  with  Bolingbroke  and  other  lords,  was  im- 
peached on  the  charge  of  high  treason.  The  far- 
seeing  eye  of  the  king,  however,  looked  beyond  such 
offenders  as  these ;  and  while  peers  and  commoners 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  229 

were  being  committed  to  prison,  or  were  flying  from 
the  country,  a  poor  cobbler  was  whipped  from  Hollo- 
way  to  Highgate  for  no  more  grievous  offence  than 
reflecting  upon  certain  measures  of  the  government. 
The  University  of  Oxford  was  as  free  of  thought, 
act,  and  expression  as  the  cobbler  of  Holloway.  The 
attainder  of  Ormond  deprived  him  of  his  university 
chancellorship,  whereupon  King  George  set  up  the 
Prince  of  Wales  as  a  candidate  for  the  office.  Ox- 
ford, to  show  its  contempt  for  the  new  dynasty, 
rejected  the  prince,  and  chose  Lord  Arran,  the  Duke 
of  Ormond's  brother.  The  king  was  so  vexed,  that 
he  wished  himself  back  again  at  Hanover,  and  per- 
haps it  was  his  vexation  which  prompted  him,  at  this 
very  time,  to  order  an  increase  of  rigour  to  be  in- 
flicted upon  his  poor  imprisoned  wife  at  Ahlden.  Nor 
did  he  spare  Oxford ;  whither  a  detachment  of  drag- 
oons was  sent,  under  the  command  of  a  major, 
appropriately  named  Pepper,  who  suddenly  seized 
upon  such  members  of  the  university  as  were  sus- 
pected of  being  more  inclined  to  "James  the  Eighth 
of  Scotland,"  than  to  "  George  the  First  of  England." 
Meanwhile,  less  noble  offenders  were  punished 
with  more  severity,  and  Tyburn  tree  creaked  with 
the  weight  of  men  who  had  enlisted  soldiers  for  the 
Pretender.  At  this  moment  the  Duke  of  Somerset 
gave  up  his  office  of  master  of  the  horse,  and  the 
husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea  appointed  to  the  vacant 
post  the  German  lady  Mile,  von  Schulemberg,  mis- 
tress of  the  monarch  and  the  mews !  The  son  of 
Sophia  Dorothea  also  succeeded  in  obtaining  office, 
and  the  rejected  of  the  University  of  Oxford  was 
elected  chancellor  by  the  University  of  Dublin. 


230  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

In  the  meantime  the  failure  of  the  rebellion  in 
Scotland  had  given  the  king  joy,  but  had  not  inspired 
him  with  mercy.  Executions  were  of  daily  occur- 
rence, and  when  the  president  of  the  council,  the 
Earl  of  Nottingham,  ventured  to  suggest  that  the 
royal  prerogative  of  mercy  was  the  brightest  gem  in 
a  kingly  crown,  he  was  turned  out  of  his  place,  and 
all  his  kinsmen  who  were  in  office  were  similarly 
treated.  The  king,  however,  granted  their  lives  to 
several  of  the  prisoners  taken  on  the  Pretender's 
side,  but  nearly  the  whole  of  them  perished  in  prison, 
through  the  severity  of  the  season  and  the  want  of 
the  necessaries  of  life. 

The  first  year  of  the  accession  of  George  was  cer- 
tainly not  untroubled,  and  he,  probably,  with  all  his 
grandeur,  was  less  happy  than  the  wife  whom  he 
held  in  such  rigorous  captivity.  The  very  heavens 
themselves  seemed  to  threaten  him,  and  we  are 
expressly  told  in  the  journals  of  the  time,  that  the 
year  ended  with  dire  phenomena  in  the  sky,  columns 
and  pillars  of  continually  flashing  light  carrying  ter- 
ror into  the  minds  of  all  beholders,  who,  lacking 
simple  knowledge,  deemed  that  the  heavens  were  not 
less  out  of  joint  than  the  earth. 

In  the  following  year  the  government  exhibited 
little  sense  in  the  application  of  their  power.  The 
wearing  of  oak-boughs  on  the  29th  of  May,  in  mem- 
ory of  the  restoration,  was  deemed  an  insult  to  the 
government ;  two  soldiers  were  whipped  (almost  to 
death)  in  Hyde  Park,  for  carrying  oak-apples  in  their 
caps,  and  guards  were  posted  in  the  streets  to 
prevent  all  persons  from  carrying  white  roses,  some 
bearers  of  which  were,  on  refusal  to  surrender  this 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  231 

badge,  very  unceremoniously  shot  by  the  rude  sol- 
diery. The  king  complacently  told  his  faithful  Com- 
mons that  all  his  money  had  been  wasted  on  the 
Jacobite  faction,  and  had  been  met  by  ingratitude 
and  more  active  treason.  The  monarch's  favours, 
however,  were  but  inconsiderately  scattered ;  and 
if  the  people  could  contemplate  without  regret  the 
nomination  of  his  brother,  Ernest  Augustus,  to  be 
Duke  of  York  and  Albany,  and  Earl  of  Ulster,  they 
were  rather  rough  of  comment  when  he  raised  Mile. 
von  Schulemberg  to  the  dignities  of  Baroness  of  Dun- 
dalk,  Countess  of  Dungannon,  Duchess  of  Munster, 
and,  finally,  Duchess  of  Kendal. 

In  contrast  with  these  palace  incidents,  I  may 
notice  an  incident  of  the  streets.  It  is  recorded  by 
Salmon  in  the  "  Chronological  Historian,"  under  the 
date  of  July  23,  1716,  and  is  to  this  effect :  "The  sons 
of  Whiggism,  having  assembled  at  a  mug-house  in 
Salisbury  Court,  Fleet  Street,  after  they  were  a  little 
elevated,  ventured  to  attack  some  Tories,  who  were 
got  together  in  the  Swan  ale-house,  over  against 
them,  whereupon  the  Tories  returned  their  visit, 
drove  them  to  their  headquarters,  and  demolished  the 
bar,  wainscot,  etc,,  below  stairs  ;  whereupon  the  mug- 
house  sent  for  arms  and  assistance,  and  one  of  the 
Tory  men  was  shot  dead  upon  the  spot  by  the  master 
of  the  mug-house,  which  so  provoked  the  other  side, 
that  had  not  the  guards  come  in  to  the  assistance  of 
the  mug  gentlemen,  a  severe  revenge  had  probably 
been  taken."  Although  the  Whigs  were  the  original 
aggressors,  the  Tories  were  the  most  severely  pun- 
ished ;  "  five  of  them  (two  of  whom  were  brothers) 
were  convicted  of  felony,  in  not  dispersing  themselves 


232          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

on  the  reading  of  the  proclamation  at  the  late  riot, 
near  the  mug-house  in  Salisbury  Court,  and  were 
hanged  at  the  end  of  Salisbury  Court,  in  Fleet 
Street,  the  22d  inst."  (September.)  A  further 
incident  worth  narrating  is,  that  the  bearers  at  the 
funeral  of  one  of  these  executed  men,  were  arrested, 
and  "  fined  twenty  marks  apiece,"  for  "  wearing  their 
favours "  in  St.  Bride's  churchyard.  The  people 
were  indignant  at  such  oppression  ;  and  when,  on  the 
9th  of  November,  the  Princess  of  Wales  gave  birth 
to  a  still-born  son,  the  Tories  looked  upon  the  event 
as  a  judgment,  and  even  hoped  for  the  entire  failure 
of  the  royal  line.  The  king  was  in  Hanover  at  the 
time,  when  he  invested  his  brother,  the  Duke  of 
York,  and  Prince  Frederick,  with  the  Order  of  the 
Garter.  He  even  partook  of  the  pleasures  of  the 
chase  in  the  woods  around  Ahlden ;  but  except 
ordering  a  more  stringent  rule  for  the  safe-keeping 
of  his  consort,  he  took  no  further  notice  of  Sophia 
Dorothea.  He  returned  to  London  on  the  i8th  of 
January,  1716-17,  and  on  that  day  week,  hearing 
that  the  Episcopal  clergy  of  Scotland  continued  to 
refuse  to  pray  for  him,  he  issued  a  decree,  which 
compelled  many  to  fly  the  country,  or  otherwise 
abscond.  The  English  clergy  experienced  even 
harsher  treatment  for  less  offence.  I  may  mention, 
as  an  instance,  the  case  of  the  Reverend  Laurence 
Howell,  who,  for  writing  a  pamphlet  called  "The 
State  of  Schism  in  the  Church  of  England  truly 
stated,"  was  stripped  of  his  gown  by  the  executioner, 
fined  ^500,  imprisoned  three  years,  and  twice  pub- 
licly whipped  by  the  hangman  ! 

On  the  2d  of  November,   1717,  the  Princess   of 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  233 

Wales  gave  birth  to  a  son,  who  was  christened  by 
the  name  of  George  William,  at  St.  James's,  by  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  on  the  28th  of  the  same 
month ;  the  king  and  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  were 
godfathers,  and  the  Duchess  of  St.  Alban's  god- 
mother. On  the  following  day,  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
by  order  of  his  father,  removed  from  St.  James's,  and 
went  to  reside  at  the  house  of  the  princess's  cham- 
berlain, the  Earl  of  Grantham,  in  Arlington  Street. 
The  princess  accompanied  him,  but  their  children 
remained  at  the  palace. 

This  removal  is  connected  with  a  palace  incident 
of  some  interest.  The  Prince  of  Wales  had  wished 
that  his  uncle,  the  Duke  of  York,  Bishop  of  Osna- 
burgh,  should  be,  with  the  king,  sponsor  to  his  child. 
George  I.  peremptorily  named  the  Duke  of  Newcastle 
as  co-sponsor,  and  would  hear  of  no  other.  The 
duke,  then  secretary  of  state,  was  hateful  to  the 
prince,  whom  he  treated  with  studied  neglect ;  and 
when  the  ceremony  of  christening  had  been  brought 
to  a  close  in  the  princess's  bedchamber,  the  prince 
crossed  from  the  foot  of  the  bed  where  he  had  been 
standing  with  his  wife's  maids  of  honour,  to  the  side 
of  the  bed  where  the  duke  was  standing  near  the 
king,  and  there  holding  up  his  hand  and  forefinger 
menacingly,  said,  in  broken  English,  "  You  are  a  ras- 
cal !  but  I  shall  find  you,"  —  meaning,  "  I  shall  find 
a  time  to  be  revenged."  The  king,  affecting  to  un- 
derstand this  as  a  challenge  to  fight,  placed  his  son 
under  arrest ;  but  soon  releasing  him  therefrom, 
turned  him  out  of  the  palace,  retaining  the  three 
eldest  daughters,  who  resided  with  him  till  his 
decease. 


234          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

The  dissensions  between  George  I.  and  his  son  are 
said  to  have  arisen  long  previous  to  the  accession  of 
the  former.  The  respect  which  the  prince  once  enter- 
tained for  his  mother  Sophia  Dorothea  may  have  had 
much  to  do  with  the  matter,  but  politics  had  also 
something  to  do  therewith.  Before  the  Act  of  Set- 
tlement, the  Electress  Sophia  was  a  Jacobite  in  prin- 
ciple;  "but,"  says  Walpole,  "no  sooner  had  King 
William  procured  a  settlement  of  the  crown,  after 
Queen  Anne,  on  her  Electoral  Highness,  than  nobody 
became  a  stancher  Whig  than  the  Princess  Sophia, 
nor  could  be  more  impatient  to  mount  the  throne  of 
the  exiled  Stuarts.  It  is  certain  that,  during  the 
reign  of  Anne,  the  Elector  George  was  inclined  to 
the  Tories,  though  after  his  mother's  death,  and  his 
own  accession,  he  gave  himself  to  the  opposite  party. 
But  if  he  and  his  mother  espoused  different  factions, 
Sophia  found  a  ready  partisan  in  her  grandson,  the 
electoral  prince  ;  and  it  is  true  that  the  demand  made 
by  the  prince  of  his  writ  of  summons  to  the  House 
of  Lords,  as  Duke  of  Cambridge,  which  no  wonder 
was  so  offensive  to  Queen  Anne,  was  made  in  con- 
cert with  his  grandmother,  without  the  privity  of  the 
elector  his  father." 

To  these  causes  of  offence  may  be  added  the  royal 
sire's  jealousy,  as  is  supposed,  of  his  son.  On  the 
first  absence  of  the  king  from  England,  the  Prince 
of  Wales  was  appointed  regent,  but  he  was  never 
entrusted  with  that  high  office  a  second  time.  "  It  is 
probable,"  says  Walpole,  "that  the  son  discovered 
too  much  fondness  for  acting  the  king,  as  that  the 
father  conceived  a  jealousy  of  his  having  done  so. 
Sure  it  is  that,  on  the  king's  return,  great  divisions 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  235 

arose  in  the  court,  and  the  Whigs  were  divided,  — 
some  devoting  themselves  to  the  wearer  of  the  crown, 
and  others  to  the  expectant."  So  that,  in  the  second 
year  of  his  reign,  the  king  not  only  held  his  wife  in 
prison,  but  his  son  and  heir  was  banished  from  his 
presence.  He  even  went  so  far  as  to  declare  to  the 
peers  and  peeresses  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  and 
to  all  privy  councillors  and  their  wives,  that  if  any  of 
them  should  go  to  the  court  of  the  Prince  and  Prin- 
cess of  Wales,  they  should  forbear  to  come  into  his 
Majesty's  presence.  At  the  same  time  that  this 
example  of  family  division  was  being  given  to  the 
kingdom,  George  I.  created  Prince  Frederick,  the 
eldest  son  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  Duke  of  Glouces- 
ter ;  and  a  day  or  two  later,  the  little  Prince  George 
William,  at  whose  christening  the  scene  of  violence 
had  occurred,  died  at  the  age  of  three  months  and 
three  days.  The  body  was  privately  interred  in 
Westminster  Abbey  on  the  I2th  of  February,  the 
Bishop  of  Rochester  reading  the  funeral  service. 

At  this  time  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  retired  to  the 
house  in  "  Leicester  Fields,"  which  he  had  recently 
purchased.  This  house  stood  in  the  northeast  cor- 
ner of  the  square,  and  was  originally  built  by  the 
Earl  of  Leicester,  father  of  Waller's  "  Sacharissa." 
The  earl  let  it  to  persons  of  "condition,"  after  ceas- 
ing to  reside  in  it  himself.  There  died  the  mother 
of  the  Electress  Sophia.  It  was  subsequently,  and 
successively,  occupied  by  the  French  and  German 
ambassadors,  and  it  was  thence  (when  the  Emperor 
of  Germany's  envoy  resided  there)  that  Beau  Fielding 
procured  the  priest  who  married  him  privately,  in 
Pall  Mall,  to  Mrs.  Mary  Wadsworth. 


236  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

About  a  month  after  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  pur- 
chased Leicester  House,  he  was  nearly  called  upon 
to  leave  it  again,  for  the  palace,  by  the  attempt  at 
assassination  made  by  a  lad,  named  Shepherd,  upon 
George  I.  This  was  on  the  6th  of  March,  1717. 
The  young  assassin  was  only  eighteen  years  of  age, 
and  was  apprentice  to  a  coach-painter.  He  looked 
upon  the  act  as  being  so  meritorious,  that  when  Lord 
Chesterfield,  just  previous  to  his  execution,  asked 
what  he  would  do  if  the  king  forgave  his  attempt  to 
shoot  him,  the  boy  replied,  "  I  would  do  it  again." 
He  met  his  fate  at  Tyburn  without  exhibiting  the 
slightest  mark  of  fear ;  and  Chesterfield  said  of  him, 
that  "  Reason  declared  him  to  be  a  Regulus,  but  that 
silly  prejudice  was  against  it."  The  most  important 
public  affair  of  the  following  year  was  the  signing  of 
the  quadruple  alliance  treaty  between  Great  Britain, 
France,  Germany,  and  Holland,  whereby  these  powers 
were,  among  other  obligations,  bound  to  support  the 
succession  to  the  British  crown  as  fixed  by  the  present 
law  of  the  land. 

Passing  over  the  record  of  public  events,  the  next 
interesting  fact  connected  with  the  private  life  of  the 
faithless  husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  was  the  mar- 
riage of  his  daughter  Charlotte,  of  whom  Madame 
Kielmansegge  (his  younger  mistress)  was  the  mother, 
with  Lord  Viscount  Howe  (of  the  kingdom  of  Ire- 
land). The  bride  was  never  publicly  acknowledged 
as  the  daughter  of  the  king,  but  the  Princess  Amelia, 
daughter  of  George  II.,  "treated  Lady  Howe's  daugh- 
ter, « Mistress  Howe,'  as  a  princess  of  the  blood  royal, 
and  presented  her  with  a  ring,  containing  a  small 
portrait  of  George  I.,  with  a  crown  in  diamonds." 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  237 

The  best  result  of  this  marriage  was,  that  the  famous 
Admiral  Howe  was  a  descendant  of  the  contracting 
parties,  and  that  was  the  only  benefit  which  the  coun- 
try derived  from  the  vicious  conduct  of  George  I. 
If  the  marriage  of  the  child  of  one  mistress  tended  to 
mortify  the  vanity  of  another,  as  is  said  to  have  been 
the  case  with  the  Schulemberg,  King  George  found  a 
way  to  pacify  her.  That  lady  was  already  Duchess 
of  Munster,  in  Ireland,  and  the  king,  in  April,  1719, 
created  her  a  baroness,  countess,  and  duchess  of 
Great  Britain,  by  the  name,  style,  and  title  of  Baron- 
ess of  Glastonbury,  Countess  of  Feversham,  and 
Duchess  of  Kendal ;  and  this  done,  the  king  soon 
after  embarked  at  Gravesend  for  Hanover.  It  was 
during  his  absence  that  a  Spanish  invasion  of  Scot- 
land, by  a  small  force,  in  conjunction  with  a  body  of 
Highlanders,  in  behalf  of  the  Pretender,  was  promptly 
suppressed  by  General  Wightman,  to  whom  the  whole 
of  the  Spaniards,  some  three  hundred  men  only,  sur- 
rendered at  discretion. 

The  year  1720  saw  King  George  more  upon  the 
Continent  than  at  home,  where  indeed  universal 
misery  reigned,  in  consequence  of  the  bursting  of  the 
great  South  Sea  bubble,  which  had  promised  such 
golden  solidity,  —  which  ended  in  such  disappoint- 
ment and  ruin,  and  for  furthering  which  the  Duchess 
of  Kendal  and  her  daughter  received  bribes  of 
;£  1 0,000  each.  In  April  of  the  following  year,  Will- 
iam Augustus  was  born  at  Leicester  House.  The 
daughter  of  Sophia  Dorothea  was  his  godmother  ;  her 
husband  and  the  Duke  of  York  were  the  godfathers. 
This  son  of  George  Augustus  and  Caroline  of  Ans- 
pach,  Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales,  was  afterward 


238  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

famous  as  the  Duke  of  Cumberland.  It  was  in  July 
of  this  same  year  that  the  king  conveyed  to  the 
House  of  Commons  the  pleasant  piece  of  information 
that  the  debts  on  his  civil  list  amounted  to  more  than 
half  a  million.  He  asked  that  body  to  provide  for 
the  payment  of  the  same,  and  the  obsequious  House 
did  what  was  asked  of  it !  No  wonder  that  on 
the  anniversary  of  the  restoration,  seditious  oak- 
apples  were  seen  in  the  citizens'  hats ;  that  on  the 
loth  of  June,  the  Pretender's  birthday,  white  roses 
decorated  their  buttonholes ;  and  that  on  the  2$d  of 
August,  Queen  Anne's  natal  day,  there  was  much 
toasting  of  the  memory  of  a  queen  who,  throughout 
her  reign,  had  not  cost  her  country  the  blood  and 
treasure  which  that  country  paid  in  any  single  year 
for  her  successor.  It  was  scarcely  a  month  after  the 
royal  request  to  the  representatives  of  the  people  to 
pay  the  penalty  of  the  king's  extravagance,  by  advanc- 
ing above  half  a  million  of  money,  when  he  quartered 
his  mistress,  Sophia  Charlotte,  Madame  Kielmans- 
egge,  on  the  civil  list  of  Ireland,  and  dignified  the 
act  by  creating  her  Countess  of  Leinster ! 

On  the  1 7th  of  January,  1721,  the  royal  family 
went  into  mourning,  and  this  was  the  only  domestic 
incident  of  the  reign  in  which  Sophia  Dorothea  was 
allowed  to  participate.  With  her,  the  mourning 
was  not  a  mere  formality ;  it  was  not  assumed,  but 
was  a  testimony  offered,  in  sign  of  her  sorrow,  for 
the  death  of  her  mother,  Eleanora,  Duchess  of  Zell. 
In  an  anonymous  biography  of  her  daughter,  the 
duchess  is  said  to  have  died  on  the  24th  of  February, 
1722,  but  the  court  of  St.  James's  went  into  mourn- 
ing for  her  on  the  nth  of  February  of  the  preceding 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  239 

year.  She  had  seen  little  of  her  daughter  for  some 
time  previous  to  her  death,  but  she  bequeathed  to  her 
as  much  of  her  private  property  as  she  had  power  to 
dispose  of  by  will. 

Sophia  Dorothea  had  now  a  considerable  amount 
of  funds  placed  to  her  credit  in  the  bank  of  Amster- 
dam. Of  the  incidents  of  her  captivity  nothing 
whatever  is  known,  save  that  it  was  most  rigidly 
maintained.  She  was  forgotten  by  the  world,  because 
unseen,  and  they  who  kept  her  in  prison  were  as 
silent  about  her  as  the  keepers  of  the  Man  in  the 
Iron  Mask  were  about  that  mysterious  object  of  their 
solicitude.  Where  little  is  known,  there  is  little  to 
be  told.  The  captive  bore  her  restraint  with  a 
patience  which  even  her  daughter  must  have  ad- 
mired ;  but  she  was  not  without  hopes  of  escaping 
from  a  thraldom  from  which  it  was  clear  she  could 
never  be  released  by  the  voluntary  act  of  those  who 
kept  her  in  an  undeserved  custody.  It  is  believed 
that  her  funds  at  Amsterdam  were  intended  by  her 
to  be  disposed  of  in  the  purchase  of  aid  to  secure  her 
escape ;  but  it  is  added  that  her  agents  betrayed 
her,  embezzled  her  property,  and  by.  revealing  for 
what  purpose  they  were  her  agents,  brought  upon  her 
a  closer  arrest  than  any  under  which  she  had  hitherto 
suffered.  Romance  has  made  some  additions  to  these 
items  of  intelligence,  —  items,  great  portions  of  which 
rest  only  on  conjecture.  The  undoubted  fact  that 
much  of  the  property  which  she  inherited  was  to 
pass  to  her  children,  rendered  the  death  of  a  mother 
a  consummation  to  be  desired  by  so  indifferent  a  son 
and  daughter  as  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Queen 
of  Prussia.  The  interest  held  by  her  husband  was  of 


240  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

a  similar  description,  and  the  fatal  consequences  that 
might  follow  were  not  unprovided  for  by  the  friends 
of  the  prisoner.  "  It  is  known,"  says  Walpole,  "  that 
in  Queen  Anne's  time  there  was  much  noise  about 
French  'prophets.  A  female  of  that  vocation  (for  we 
know  from  Scripture  that  the  gift  of  prophecy  is  not 
limited  to  one  gender)  warned  George  I.  to  take  care 
of  his  wife,  as  he  would  not  survive  her  a  year.  That 
oracle  was  probably  dictated  to  the  French  Deborah 
by  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Zell,  who  might  be 
apprehensive  that  the  Duchess  of  Kendal  might 
be  tempted  to  remove  entirely  the  obstacle  to  her 
conscientious  union  with  their  son-in-law.  Most  Ger- 
mans are  superstitious,  even  such  as  have  few  other 
impressions  of  religion.  George  gave  such  credit  to 
the  denunciation,  that,  on  the  eve  of  his  last  depar- 
ture, he  took  leave  of  his  son  and  the  Princess  of 
Wales  with  tears,  telling  them  he  should  never  see 
them  more.  It  was  certainly  his  own  approaching 
end  that  melted  him,  not  the  thought  of  quitting  for 
ever  two  persons  that  he  hated." 

But  both  parties  had  yet  a  few  years  to  live,  and  one 
of  them  some  honours  to  bestow.  It  was  almost  in 
the  same  hour  that  George  wrote  directions  for  the 
stricter  keeping  of  his  wife,  and  signed  the  patents 
for  raising  his  mistress  in  the  peerage.  On  the  same 
day,  "  Sophia  Charlotte  von  Platen,  Countess  of  Lein- 
ster,  in  Ireland,"  was  raised  to  the  rank  of  Baroness 
of  Brentford,  and  Countess  of  Darlington,  in  Eng- 
land; and  the  king's  illegitimate  daughter,  Melusina 
de  Schulemberg,  niece  (as  the  patent  lyingly  declared) 
of  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  was  created  Baroness  of 
Aldborough,  and  Countess  of  Walsingham.  This 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  241 

was  on  the  loth  of  April,  1722.  That  day  week,  the 
Prince  of  Wales  made  a  better  trial  upon  the  admira- 
tion of  the  public,  by  having  his  two  daughters, 
Amelia  and  Caroline,  inoculated  for  the  smallpox ; 
a  trial  which  ended  favourably,  as  it  deserved  to  do. 
"The  quality,"  say  the  papers  of  the  day,  "would 
have  universally  followed  this  example,  but  for  the 
death  of  the  infant  son  of  the  Earl  of  Sunderland, 
who  died  of  smallpox  after  inoculation."  The  family 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales  was  increased,  in  the  year 
1722,  by  the  birth  of  a  daughter,  —  Mary. 

The  last  foreign  favourite  of  George  I.,  Sophia 
Charlotte  von  Platen,  Countess  of  Darlington,  did 
not  long  enjoy  the  new  honours  conferred  upon  her 
by  the  king :  she  died  in  the  month  of  April,  1 724. 
This  death  was  followed,  soon  after,  by  that  of  the 
king's  brother,  Maximilian  William,  a  colonel  in  the 
service  of  the  emperor.  He  was  a  rigid  Roman 
Catholic,  as  were  others  of  his  family ;  and,  at  the 
time  of  his  death,  which  occurred  at  Vienna,  he  was 
in  the  sixtieth  year  of  his  age.  On  the  2d  of 
November,  1726,  a  death  which  should  have  more 
nearly  touched  the  king  took  place  in  Germany.  On 
the  day  named,  in  the  castle  of  Ahlden,  calmly,  and 
almost  unobservedly,  died  the  poor  princess,  "  Queen 
of  Great  Britain,"  as  those  who  loved  her  were  wont 
to  call  her,  —  after  a  captivity  of  more  than  thirty 
years.  She  had  been  long  in  declining  health,  born 
of  declining  hopes ;  and  yet  she  endured  all  things 
with  patience,  contenting  herself  in  her  last  moments 
with  reasserting  her  innocence,  commending  herself  to 
God,  naming  her  children,  and  pardoning  her  oppress- 
ors. Thus  much'  is  generally  known ;  but  there  is 


242  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

little  further  reliable  information.  She  was  a  pris- 
oner, and  she  died :  and  such  is  the  amount  of  what  is 
really  known  concerning  her,  after  she  was  cloistered 
up  within  the  limits  of  the  castle  and  estate  at  Ahlden. 
Her  royal  husband  simply  notified,  in  the  Gazette, 
that  a  Duchess  of  Ahlden  had  died  at  her  residence, 
on  the  date  above  named ;  but  he  did  not  add  that  he 
had  thereby  lost  a  wife,  or  his  children  lost  a  mother. 
No  intimation  was  given  of  the  relationship  she  held 
toward  him  or  them ;  but  his  ire  burst  forth  into  an 
explosion  of  rage,  when  he  heard  that  his  daughter, 
with  the  court  of  Prussia,  had  gone  into  mourning  for 
the  death  of  her  mother.  The  amiable  father  and 
king,  having  thus  exhibited  the  character  of  his  own 
feeling,  proceeded  to  manifest  that  of  his  very  bad 
taste.  It  was  shortly  after  the  demise  of  his  consort, — 
•not  that  he  had  waited  for  the  event,  —  that  he  raised 
to  the  infamy  of  being  his  "favourite"  an  English 
woman,  named  Ann  Brett,  half-sister  of  Savage,  the 
poet,  —  their  common  mother,  the  repudiated  wife  of 
the  Earl  of  Macclesfield,  having  married  that  rakish 
gentleman  Colonel  Brett,  by  whom  she  became  the 
mother  of  Ann,  in  whom  the  foreign  sovereign  of 
England  paid  the  nation  the  compliment,  as  Walpole 
satirically  says,  of  taking  openly  an  English  mistress. 
Miss  Brett,  unlike  the  other  royal  concubines,  resided 
in  St.  James's  Palace.  "Abishag,"  says  Walpole, 
"  was  lodged  in  the  palace  under  the  eyes  of  Bath- 
sheba,  who  seemed  to  maintain  her  power,  as  other 
favourite  sultanas  have  done,  by  suffering  partners  in 
the  sovereign's  affections."  George  intended  to  have 
honoured  her,  and  dishonoured  the  peerage,  by  rais- 
ing her  to  the  rank  of  a  countess.  Three  of  the 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  243 

granddaughters  of  the  king  also  resided  in  the  palace, 
and  "  Anne,  the  eldest,  a  woman,"  says  Mr.  Cunning- 
ham, "of  a  most  imperious  and  ambitious  nature, 
soon  came  to  words  with  the  English  mistress  of  her 
grandfather."  After  the  king  repaired,  for  the  last 
time,  to  Hanover,  Miss  Brett  ordered  a  door  to  be 
broken  in  the  wall  of  her  apartment,  in  order  that  she 
might  have  access  by  it  to  the  royal  gardens.  In 
these  gardens  the  Princess  Anne  was  accustomed  to 
walk,  and  not  desiring  Miss  Brett  for  a  companion, 
she  ordered  the  door  to  be  bricked  up.  "  Abishag  " 
had  the  obstruction  removed,  and  the  princess  again 
bricked  up  the  concubine ;  and  thus  went  on  the  war 
between  them,  until  news  of  the  death  of  the  un- 
worthy grandfather  of  the  one,  and  the  wretched  old 
lover  of  the  other,  put  an  end  to  the  conflict,  and  to 
many  other  matters  besides. 

Not  long  before  his  Majesty  set  out  on  his  last 
Continental  journey,  his  bronze  statue,  erected  in 
Grosvenor  Square,  was,  on  one  dark  night,  treated 
with  great  indignity.  Its  limbs  were  hacked  and 
mutilated,  the  neck  was  hewn  into,  as  if  an  attempt 
had  been  made  to  decapitate  it,  and  a  seditious  libel 
affixed  to  the  breast.  With  this  type  of  the  national 
feeling  impressed  upon  his  mind,  the  king  set  out  for 
Hanover  on  the  3d  of  June,  1 727.  On  the  night  of 
that  day  week  he  died  at  Osnaburgh,  aged  sixty-seven 
years  and  thirteen  days.  The  king  had  landed  at 
Vaer,  in  Holland,  on  the  7th,  and  he  travelled  thence 
to  Utrecht,  by  land,  escorted  by  the  Guards  to  the 
frontiers  of  Holland.  On  Friday,  the  Qth,  he  reached 
Dalden,  at  twelve  at  night,  when  he  was  apparently 
in  excellent  health.  He  partook  of  supper  largely, 


244          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

and  with  appetite,  eating,  among  other  things,  part 
of  a  melon,  a  fruit  which  has  killed  more  than  one 
Emperor  of  Germany.  At  three  the  next  morning 
he  resumed  his  journey;  but  he  had  not  travelled 
two  hours  when  he  was  attacked  by  violent  abdominal 
pains.  He  hurried  on  to  Linden,  where  dinner  awaited 
him ;  but  being  able  to  eat  nothing,  he  was  immedi- 
ately bled,  and  other  remedies  made  use  of.  Anxious 
to  reach  Hanover,  he  ordered  the  journey  to  be  con- 
tinued with  all  speed.  He  fell  into  a  lethargic  doze 
in  the  carriage,  and  so  continued,  leaning  on  a  gentle- 
man in  waiting,  who  was  with  him  in  the  carriage. 
To  this  attendant  he  feebly  announced  in  French, 
"I  am  a  dead  man."  He  reached .  the  episcopal 
palace  at  Osnaburgh  at  ten  that  night ;  was  again 
bled  in  the  arm  and  foot,  but  ineffectually :  his  leth- 
argy increased,  and  he  died  about  midnight. 

A  well-known  story  is  told  by  Walpole,  to  the 
effect  that  George,  "in  a  tender  mood,  promised  to 
the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  that  if  she  survived  him,  and 
it  were  possible  for  the  departed  to  return  to  this 
world,  he  would  make  her  a  visit.  The  duchess,  on 
his  death,  so  much  expected  the  accomplishment  of 
that  engagement,  that  a  large  raven,  or  some  black 
fowl,  flying  into  the  windows  of  her  villa,  at  Isle- 
worth  "  (Twickenham  ?),  "  she  was  persuaded  it  was 
the  soul  of  her  departed  monarch  so  accoutred,  and 
received  and  treated  it  with  all  the  respect  and  ten- 
derness of  duty,  till  this  royal  bird  or  she  took  their 
last  flight." 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

BERENGARIA    AND    SOPHIA    DOROTHEA, CCEUR   DE 

LION,    AND    GEORGE   OF    HANOVER 

Fate  of  Berengaria  —  The  Heiress  of  Cyprus  —  Comparison  of 
Sophia  and  the  Queen  of  Cceur  de  Lion  —  Richard  the  First 
and  the  Elector  —  Statue  to  George  the  First,  but  Denied  to 
Cromwell  —  Tyranny  and  Cruelty  of  Richard  —  Origin  of  the 
Order  of  the  Garter  —  Project  to  Make  Away  with  the  Prince  of 
Wales  —  Character  of  George  I.  —  Anecdotes  of  Him  —  George 
the  Second  as  a  Young  Man  —  Picture  of  the  Court  of  Prussia 
—  Brutality  of  Frederick  to  His  Wife  and  Family  —  A  Drunkard 
and  Madman. 

I  HAVC  already  remarked,  that  of  all  the  Queens 
of  England  there  were  two  who  never  landed  on  the 
shores  of  the  country  of  which  they  were  nominally 
the  queens.  Those  two  were  Berengaria,  the  consort 
of  Coeur  de  Lion,  and  Sophia  Dorothea,  wife  of 
George  of  Hanover.  Nor  were  these  the  only  cir- 
cumstances in  the  lives  of  the  two  princesses  which 
were  similar:  there  were  many  other  passages  be- 
tween which  a  parallel  may  be  drawn,  and  which  may 
be  appropriately  brought  before  the  notice  of,  at  least, 
younger  readers. 

Berengaria,  the  Navarrese  princess,  was  not  a  first 
love  of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion.  The  latter  had'wooed 
Alice  of  France  before  he  became  struck  with  the 
beauty  of  Berengaria,  at  a  tournament,  and  made  her 


246          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

an  offer  of  his  hand.  In  similar  manner,  George 
Louis  had  wooed,  but  was  not  engaged  to,  Anne 
(as  Richard  was  to  Alice)  before  he  sought  in  mar- 
riage the  youthful  Sophia  of  Zell. 

It  was  in  each  case  the  mother  of  the  lover  who 
made  the  demand  for  the  lady's  hand;  and  Beren- 
garia  was  as  eagerly  surrendered  to  Eleanor,  the 
mother  of  Richard,  by  her  father,  Sancho  the  Wise, 
as  Sophia  Dorothea  was  to  Sophia  of  Hanover,  by 
her  sire,  the  Duke  of  Zell.  It  may  here  be  noticed, 
that  however  similar  the  destinies  of  the  ladies,  there 
was  nothing  alike  in  the  characters  of  their  respective 
fathers,  except  only  in  their  love  for  being  surrounded 
by  foreigners,  and  especially  by  Frenchmen.  In  the 
case  of  the  father  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  this  inclination 
was  taught  him  by  his  Gallic  wife.  On  one  occasion, 
at  a  court  dinner,  when  the  whole  of  the  duke's  guests 
were  found  to  be  Frenchmen,  one  of  them,  more  truly 
than  courteously,  remarked  that  "  II  n'y  a  d'&ranger 
ici  que  monseigneur"  (His  Highness  is  the  only  for- 
eigner present) ;  a  remark  which  might  have  been 
made  at  the  table  of  the  Spanish  Sancho  of  Navarre, 
who  was  surrounded  by  poets  and  minstrels  from 
other,  and  sometimes  far  distant  lands. 

Berengaria  and  Richard  were  espoused  at  Li- 
moussa,  in  Cyprus,  and  as  much  rude  pomp  was  dis- 
played at  the  wedding  as  of  cumbrous  ceremony  at 
that  of  Sophia  and  George  Louis.  The  former  so- 
lemnity followed  upon  much  wandering  about  by  sea 
and  land,  before  the  affianced  couple  met  at  Cyprus, 
where  Richard  first  overthrew  the  power  of  Isaac, 
the  sovereign,  and  took  possession  of  his  dominions, 
before  he  espoused  his  "ladye,"  and  crowned  her 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  247 

Queen  of  Cyprus  as  well  as  of  England.  George 
Louis  had  no  opportunity  to  accomplish  any  achieve- 
ment of  a  like  nature ;  but  he  very  much  resembled 
the  wild  bridegroom  in  the  act  which  followed.  When 
Richard  captured  Isaac,  there  also  surrendered  to 
him  Isaac's  daughter,  and  the  English  king  placed 
the  fair  Cypriote  in  the  train  of  his  newly  married 
wife,  where  she  held  an  office  j  milar  to  that  which 
George  Louis  bestowed  on  Mile,  von  Schulemberg, 
when  he  appointed  her  maid  of  honour  to  Sophia 
Dorothea. 

But  Berengaria  was  more  fortunate  than  Sophia 
in  one  thing:  she  had  a  faithful  friend,  and  that 
friend  a  woman,  —  Joanna,  her  sister-in-law ;  and  the 
two 

"  Held  each  other  dear, 
And  lived  as  doves  in  cage." 

Sophia  had  as  friend  only  Prince  Philip,  the  brother 
of  her  husband,  and  he  communicated  little  with  her, 
save  through  his  confidant,  —  the  presuming  and  ill- 
destined  Count  Konigsmark.  It  may  be  added  that 
Richard  was  more  justly  punished  for  his  infidelities 
than  George,  seeing  that  the  scandals  which  con- 
nected the  name  of  the  Cypriote  lady  with  that  of 
the  English  king,  touched  the  honour  of  the  house 
of  Austria,  related  to  her  by  the  alliance  of  the  Arch- 
duke Leopold  with  the  family  of  the  Comneni ;  and 
these  scandals  commenced  the  feud  between  Leopold 
and  Richard,  for  which  the  latter  paid  so'  dearly  by 
his  captivity  in  Austria. 

In  the  meantime,  throughout  the  Syrian  campaign, 
the  "  heiress  of  Cyprus  "  remained  near  the  presence 


248  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

of  Berengaria,  who  had  already  nearly  outlived  the 
liking  of  her  lord.  Sophia  Dorothea  saw  as  swift  a 
change  in  the  fidelity  of  her  lord.  Richard  proceeded 
on  this  way,  however,  at  the  conclusion  of  the  cam- 
paign, in  a  ship  belonging  to  a  master  of  the  Temple. 
How  this  ship  was  wrecked,  and  how  its  royal 
passenger  was  ultimately  made  a  prisoner,  need  not 
here  be  told.  The  vessel  which  bore  Berengaria, 
Joanna,  and  that  unwelcome  lady  of  Cyprus,  —  all 
under  the  guardianship  of  a  suburban  knight,  named 
Sir  Stephen  of  Turnham,  —  arrived  safely  at  Naples, 
where  the  ladies  landed,  and  thence  proceeded  to 
Rome.  After  long  delays,  and  much  trouble,  they 
travelled  to  Pisa,  Genoa,  and  again  by  ship  to  Mar- 
seilles. From  the  latter  port  they  were  escorted  by 
the  Crusader  Raymond  de  St.  Giles,  who  very  natu- 
rally fell  in  love  with  Joanna  by  the  way,  and  very 
aptly  celebrated  the  arrival  of  the  party  in  Poitou  by 
marrying,  and  making  a  happy  countess  of  the  young 
and  well-endowed  friend  of  Berengaria. 

At  Poitou,  Berengaria  remained  during  her  royal 
husband's  captivity.  The  Cypriote  princess  con- 
tinued to  reside  with  her ;  a  fact  which  says  much 
for  her  Griselda-like  patience.  When,  however,  it 
was  intimated  that  the  Archduke  of  Austria  would 
not  consent  to  the  liberation  of  Richard  but  on  con- 
dition, among  other  stipulations,  that  the  daughter  of 
Isaac  should  be  taken  from  the  household  of  Richard 
and  be  delivered  to  her  Austrian  relatives  at  the 
German  congress,  the  spouse  of  Richard,  no  doubt, 
paid  that  portion  of  the  ransom  with  all  the  eagerness 
of  an  unselfish  wife. 

The  payment   never  brought  the  truant  husband 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  249 

nearer  to  his  wife  than  George  ever  was  to  Sophia 
Dorothea,  after  the  intrigues  of  his  and  his  father's 
mistresses  had  made  two  hearths  in  one  household. 
Richard  hurried  to  England,  and  thence  to  his  Ange- 
vin territories.  Here  he  was  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
dwelling-place  of  his  faithful  queen,  but  he  never  ap- 
proached her,  nor  showed  more  solicitude  for  her 
than  George  Louis  did,  when  hunting  in  the  Ahlden 
woods,  for  the  guiltless  prisoner  in  the  castle  there. 

In  both  cases  the  husbands  were  given  to  low 
debauchery,  profligate  company,  and  riotous  living. 
In  both  cases  the  husbands  made  two  overtures  of 
reconciliation,  which  in  both  cases  were  not  indeed 
ineffectual,  because  in  the  case  of  the  earlier  espoused 
couple,  the  wife  had  not  been  degraded  by  an  accusa- 
tion of  infidelity  made  by  her  husband,  —  an  accusation 
insultingly  implied  by  George  Louis  in  his  persecution 
of  Sophia  Dorothea.  The  reconciliation  alluded  to 
took  place  in  1 196,  five  years  after  the  marriage  had 
taken  place  in  Cyprus ;  nearly  the  whole  of  which 
time  had  been  spent  in  presence  of  the  rivalry  of  the 
Cypriote  princess,  or  in  estrangement  from  Richard. 
The  reunion  lasted  three  years ;  and  had  it  been  fol- 
lowed by  the  birth  of  an  heir  to  England,  it  would 
have  saved  the  country  from  the  career  of  John, 
John  himself  from  the  sin  of  the  murder  of  Arthur, 
and  the  kingdom  from  being  put  under  interdict  be- 
cause John  was  dishonest  enough  to  cheat  Berengaria 
out  of  her  dower. 

Berengaria  passed  a  long  widowhood  at  Mans,  in 
extent  of  time  equal  to  that  of  the  captivity  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  at  Ahlden.  But  she  was  a  happier,  and 
perhaps  something  of  a  more  patient,  woman  than 


250  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  latter.  Even  in  her  estrangement  from  her  hus- 
band, she  never  uttered  a  word  of  complaint  against 
him.  Not  that  Sophia  Dorothea  failed  to  exhibit 
either  mildness  or  dignity  in  her  captivity :  on  the 
contrary,  she  manifested  both ;  and  Coxe  says  of  her, 
in  his  "  Memoirs  of  Walpole,"  that,  "  on  receiving  the 
sacrament  once  every  week,  she  never  omitted  mak- 
ing the  most  solemn  asseverations  that  she  was  not 
guilty  of  the  crime  laid  to  her  charge."  The  two 
wives  resembled  each  other  in  personal  beauty,  and 
in  amiability  of  disposition.  There  was  less  similar- 
ity between  the  external  appearance  of  their  respec- 
tive husbands.  George  Louis  was  small  of  stature, 
an  ill-dresser  in  his  early  days,  and  an  equally  bad 
one  in  declining  years,  when  Walpole  described  him 
as  "an  elderly  man,  pale,  exactly  like  his  pictures 
and  coins,  not  tall,  of  an  aspect  rather  good  than 
august ;  with  a  dark  tie,  wig,  a  plain  coat,  waistcoat 
and  breeches  of  snuff-coloured  cloth,  with  stockings 
of  the  same  colour,  and  a  blue  riband  over  all." 
Quite  another  figure  was  Richard  in  his  satin  tunic 
of  rose  colour,  belted  round  his  waist ;  his  mantle  of 
silver  tissue,  striped,  and  brocaded  with  silver  half- 
moons,  his  Damascus  sword,  gold-hilted  and  silver- 
sheathed  ;  and  his  scarlet  bonnet,  brocaded  in  gold 
with  figures  of  animals.  He  had  yellow,  or  flaxen, 
hair,  golden  locks,  indeed,  a  bright  complexion,  a 
soldierly  bearing,  and  a  graceful  figure;  but  the 
hearts  of  Richard  and  George  were  very  much  alike : 
neither  of  them  could  appreciate  the  worth  of  a  true 
woman,  pure  of  mind,  refined  of  taste,  and  guiltless 
of  wrong,  even  in  thought. 

We  have  raised  statues  to  George,  but  have  dis- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  251 

erectly  hidden  them  in  the  shrubberies,  dust,  and 
duskiness  of  our  squares.  One  was  raised  to  him  even 
in  his  lifetime ;  but  it  is  only  within  a  year  or  two  that 
the  question  has  been  agitated  of  erecting  a  statue  in 
honour  of  the  husband  of  Berengaria.  This  question 
has  been  affirmatively  maintained  by  men  who  oppose 
the  admission  of  the  statue  of  Cromwell  among  those 
of  the  masters  of  England  in  the  House  of  Parlia- 
ment. Upon  the  matter  of  Cromwell's  statue  I  must 
not  dilate,  more  than  to  say,  that  the  difficulty  lies 
in  a  very  small  compass.  If  the  sovereigns  of  Eng- 
land are  to  be  faithfully  represented  according  to 
their  succession,  then  Cromwell  cannot  be  excluded ; 
and  if  his  exclusion  is  determined  upon  because  he 
was  usurper,  or  regicide,  then  must  there  be  unoccu- 
pied pedestals  from  Rufus  to  Stephen,  both  inclusive  ; 
and  John,  the  third  Richard,  and  indeed  several 
others,  must  also  be  refused  admission,  on  the  ground 
that  they  were  assassins  or  usurpers,  and  sometimes 
both. 

But  if  the  people  mutilated  the  statue  of  the  hus- 
band of  Sophia  Dorothea  in  his  lifetime  because  of 
his  unworthiness,  still  more  might  their  successors 
protest  against  one  being  raised  in  honour  of  that 
husband  of  the  other  Queen  of  England  who  never 
came  among  us  to  claim  our  homage. 

Richard  was  even  a  worse  son  than  George.  The 
two  men  were  faithless  as  husbands,  brutal  as  lovers, 
truthless  and  bloody  as  princes.  There  was  no  re- 
spect for  the  honour  of  any  woman  in  the  heart  of 
either  of  them  ;  and  they  further  resembled  each 
other  in  this,  that,  in  their  early  days,  they  had  more 
affection  for  the  political  system  of  France,  as  re- 


252  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

garded  this  country,  than  for  that  of  England.  Of 
the  ten  years  of  the  triply  accursed  reign  of  the  one, 
scarcely  more  than  half  as  many  months  were  spent 
by  him  among  the  people  confided  by  Providence  to 
his  sway.  George  ranks  next  to  him  as  an  absentee  : 
he  was  for  ever  seeking  an  opportunity  to  visit  Han- 
over, and,  when  there,  devising  excuses  for  not 
returning.  Richard  sold  the  highest  offices  of  the 
crown,  and  squandered  the  money  on  the  gratifica- 
tion of  his  debasing  vices.  George  was  quite  as 
unscrupulous,  and  gave  offices  even  to  his  mis- 
tresses. The  husband  of  Berengaria  was  more  crim- 
inal in  his  fraudulent  sale  of  crown  lands  as  well  as 
crown  offices,  of  titles,  and  of  church  preferments, 
in  some  of  which  things  the  husband  of  Sophia 
Dorothea,  or  his  government,  was  by  no  means  par- 
ticular. 

When  Richard  was  about  setting  out  for  Acre,  he 
instituted  the  Order  of  the  Blue  Thong,  the  insignia 
of  which  was  a  blue  band  of  leather,  worn  on  the  left 
leg,  and  which  appears  to  me  to  be  the  undoubted 
original  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter.  There  were 
twenty-four  knights  of  the  order,  with  the  king  for 
master,  and  the  wearers  pledged  themselves  to  de- 
serve increased  honours  by  scaling  the  walls  of  Acre 
in  company.  On  the  other  hand,  if  George  did  not 
institute,  he  at  least  restored  the  Order  of  the  Bath. 
It  was  a  measure  proposed  to  him  by  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  and  "  was  an  artful  bank  of  thirty  -  six 
ribands  to  supply  a  fund  of  favours  in  lieu  of  places." 
Two  of  the  ribands  were  offered  to  Sarah,  Dowager 
Duchess  of  Marlborough,  for  her  grandson  the  duke, 
and  for  the  Duke  of  Bedford,  the  husband  of  her 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  253 

granddaughter.  "  She  haughtily  replied,"  says  Wai- 
pole,  "they  should  take  nothing  but  the  Garter. 
*  Madam,'  said  Sir  Robert,  coolly,  '  they  who  have  the 
Bath  will  the  sooner  have  the  Garter.'  The  next  year 
he  took  the  latter  himself  with  the  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond, both  having  been  previously  installed  knights 
of  the  revived  institution." 

Richard  sold  the  trophies  of  his  former  victories 
for  a  capful  of  marks ;  and  his  refusal  adequately  to 
avenge  the  slaughter  of  the  Jews  at  his  coronation, 
with  the  assertion  of  assassins  who  perpetrated  the 
deed  that  they  acted  under  his  sanction,  all  tends  to 
show  how  little  he  really  prized  honour,  and  how  as 
little  he  regarded  the  spilling  of  blood.  So  George, 
if  brave,  was  not  chivalrous ;  and  when  his  own  Par- 
liament, on  the  conviction  of  the  Scottish  peers  who 
had  taken  arms  for  the  Pretender,  petitioned  him  to 
spare  as  many  as  his  mercy  might  be  consistently 
extended  to,  he  haughtily  reproved  them  for  med- 
dling with  matters  which  did  not  concern  them,  and 
took  a  bloody  vengeance  for  a  venial  crime.  It 
would  have  been  bloodier,  but  that  several  destined 
victims  escaped  from  their  prison  previous  to  the  day 
named  for  their  execution. 

Both  these  men  were,  however,  brave  in  the  pres- 
ence of  an  enemy  on  the  battle-field.  Courage  was 
almost  their  solitary  virtue ;  and  George,  unlike  Rich- 
ard, never  ran  away  in  affright  from  the  wrath  and 
the  cudgel  of  an  infuriated  peasant.  It  may  further  be 
put  to  the  credit  of  the  husband  of  Sophia  Dorothea 
that  he  was  incapable  of  such  a  crime  as  that  com- 
mitted by  the  husband  of  Berengaria  after  the  capitu- 
lation at  Acre,  when  he  ordered  the  throats  of 


2£4  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

thousands  of  the  enemy  to  be  cut  who  had  surren- 
dered upon  faith  of  honourable  treatment.  If  some 
of  the  Jacobites  were  entrapped  into  a  surrender 
which  led  them  to  the  gallows,  the  agents  of  George, 
and  not  that  king  himself,  must  be  declared  respon- 
sible, despite  the  apophthegm  which  says,  qui  facit 
per  alium  facit  per  se. 

Richard  plundered  his  country  in  order  to  carry  on 
a  Crusade  under  the  influence  of  "a  red  rag  and 
insanity."  His  deputies  plundered  it  in  his  absence, 
and  the  people  were  plundered  of  one-fourth  of  their 
property  to  purchase  his  return.  When  that  return  had 
taken  place,  he  deprived  of  their  office  all  those  per- 
sons to  whom  he  had  before  his  departure  sold  them, 
on  the  plea  that  such  sales  were  illegal.  He  did  not 
refund  the  original  purchase-money,  but  he  resold 
the  appointments  to  other  buyers.  There  was  as 
great  an  unlawful  buying  and  selling  in  George's 
time,  but  the  system  was  more  blamable  than  the 
individual  who  presided  over  it,  although  he  alone  is 
answerable  for  the  application  of  the  people's  taxes 
to  support  the  glittering  profligacy  of  his  mistresses. 
He  was  at  least  careful  to  contract  the  expenses  of 
his  civil  list,  —  after  he  had  gone  far  enough  beyond 
honest  limits  to  have  acquired  sufficient  surplus 
money  to  support  the  expenses  of  the  list  during 
the  remainder  of  his  reign,  and  after  he  had  per- 
suaded his  Parliament  to  make  good  the  defalcation. 
Both  kings  mulcted  their  subjects  heavily  to  support 
wars  against  a  foreign  power,  and  neither  paid  much 
regard  to  either  remonstrance  or  complaint.  They 
were  both  covetous ;  Richard  more  particularly  so. 
Covetousness  brought  about  his  death.  The  Lord 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  255 

of  Limoges  had  discovered  a  treasure,  and,  because 
he  would  not  give  the  whole  of  it  to  Richard,  the 
latter  besieged  him  in  his  castle,  before  which  he 
was  slain  by  a  bolt  driven  from  a  crossbow  of  his 
own  invention.  George,  like  him,  died  abroad,  but 
more  ingloriously.  It  was  rather  gluttony  than  cov- 
etousness,  in  its  pecuniary  sense,  which  compassed 
his  death.  Had  he  not  eaten  indiscreetly  of  melon, 
in  spite  of  counsel  to  the  contrary,  he  might,  perhaps, 
have  lived  longer.  But  appetite  he  could  not  constrain. 
Richard  had  a  strong  one,  but  it  was  "nicer"  of 
character.  George,  for  instance,  was  fond  of  oysters 
—  not  fresh  English  natives,  but  tainted  things  with 
sickly  yawning  shells,  and  these  he  would  swallow 
with  disgusting  relish  and  avidity. 

Richard  does  not  bear  the  reputation  of  being  a 
tender  father,  even  to  his  illegitimate  children,  and 
he  had  no  other.  George  was  as  little  parentally 
tender  to  his  legitimate  son  and  daughter :  to  the 
former  he  was  especially  harsh,  and  more  than  harsh, 
if  we  may  credit  the  story,  that  he  received  from  the 
Earl  of  Berkeley  (first  lord  of  the  admiralty)  a  writ- 
ten proposal  to  seize  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  convey 
him  to  America,  where  he  should  never  be  heard  of 
more.  The  proposal  was  Berkeley's,  but  the  hand- 
writing in  which  it  was  made  was  that  of  Charles 
Stanhope,  brother  of  the  first  Earl  of  Harrington. 
On  the  death  of  the  king,  Queen  Caroline  found  the 
proposal  among  other  papers  in  his  cabinet.  It  re- 
ferred to  an  atrocious  deed,  and  Walpole  thinks  that 
George  I.  was  too  humane  to  listen  to  it ;  a  very 
gratuitous  surmise,  for  the  treatment  of  Sophia 
Dorothea  was  only  less  atrocious  in  degree,  not  in 


256  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

principle.  Besides,  the  projectors  were  never  pun- 
ished. "  It  was  not  very  kind  to  the  conspirators," 
says  Walpole,  "to  leave  such  an  instrument  behind 
him  ;  and,"  he  adds,  "  if  virtue  and  conscience  will  not 
check  bold,  bad  men  from  paying  court  by  detestable 
offices,  the  king's  carelessness,  or  indifference,  in  such 
an  instance  ought  to  warn  them  of  the  little  gratitude 
that  such  machinations  can  inspire  or  expect." 

This  son's  double  fault  in  his  father's  eyes  was  his 
popularity,  and,  at  one  time,  his  love  for  his  mother, 
—  whom  he  loved,  we  are  told,  as  much  as  he  hated 
his  father.  A  pleasant  household,  a  sorry  hearth; 
mistresses  resting  their  rouged  cheeks  on  the  mon- 
arch's bosom,  a  wife  in  prison,  and  a  son  hating  her 
oppressor,  and  loving  but  not  redressing  the  oppressed. 
If  Berengaria  was  unblessed  with  a  child,  she  was 
untried  by  no  huge  and  lengthened  wrong  as  that 
inflicted  on  Sophia  Dorothea.  Had  the  latter  help- 
less lady  survived  her  consort,  her  son,  it  is  said,  had 
determined  to  bring  her  over  to  England,  and  pro- 
claim her  queen  dowager.  Lady  Suffolk,  the  snubbed 
mistress  of  that  son,  expressed  to  Horace  Walpole 
her  surprise  in  going  (in  the  morning  after  the  in- 
telligence of  the  death  of  George  I.  had  reached 
England)  to  the  new  queen,  the  wife  of  the  man  of 
whom  Lady  Suffolk  was  the  concubine  rather  than 
the  "  mistress,"  —  expressed,  as  I  have  said,  her  sur- 
prise "at  seeing  hung  up  in  the  queen's  dressing- 
room  a  whole  length  of  a  lady  in  royal  robes  ;  and,  in 
the  bedchamber,  a  half-length  of  the  same  person, 
neither  of  which  Lady  Suffolk  had  ever  seen  before. 
The  prince  had  kept  them  concealed,  not  daring  to 
produce  them  during  the  life  of  his  father.  The 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  257 

whole  length  he  probably  sent  to  Hanover.  The 
half-length  I  have  frequently  seen  in  the  library  of 
the  Princess  Amelia,  who  told  me  it  was  the  prop- 
erty of  her  grandmother.  She  bequeathed  it,  with 
other  pictures  of  her  family,  to  her  nephew,  the 
Landgrave  of  Hesse." 

Smollett  describes  George  I.  rather  whimsically, 
as  "a  wise  politician,  who  perfectly  understood,  and 
steadily  pursued  his  own  interest."  If  this  be  true 
policy,  it  is  also,  at  least  in  part,  a  selfish  one.  His 
character  partook  of  both  the  grave  and  gay.  He 
Aknew  when  he  might  fitly  be  either,  but  he  was 
naturally  more  serious  than  light  of  deportment  and 
disposition.  Smollett  declares  him  to  have  been 
willing  to  govern  the  kingdom  according  to  constitu- 
tional principles,  but  that  he  was  thwarted  by  a  venal 
and  corrupt  ministry.  The  character  of  the  govern- 
ment is  not  overcharged,  and  the  members  of  it 
would,  as  Richard  expressed  his  own  willingness 
to  do,  have  sold  London  itself,  the  honour  of  its  men, 
and  the  virtue  of  its  women,  if  they  could  have  found 
purchasers. 

The  character  drawn  by  Chesterfield  of  the  hus- 
band of  Sophia  Dorothea  is  seriously  drawn,  but  it 
has  a  solemnly  satirical  air.  "  George  I.,"  says  my 
lord,  "was  an  honest,  dull,  German  gentleman,  as 
unfit  as  unwilling  to  act  the  part  of  a  king,  which 
is  to  shine  and  oppress  ;  lazy  and  inactive  even  in  his 
pleasures,  which  were  therefore  lowly  sensual.  He 
was  diffident  of  his  own  parts,  which  made  him  speak 
little  in  public,  and  prefer  in  his  social,  which  were  his 
favourite,  hours  the  company  of  wags  and  buffoons. 
Even  his  mistress,  the  Duchess  of  Kendal,  with 


258  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

whom  he  passed  most  of  his  time,  and  who  had 
all  influence  over  him,  was  very  little  above  an  idiot. 

"  Importunity  alone  could  make  him  act,  and  then 
only  to  get  rid  of  it.  His  views  and  affections  were 
singly  confined  to  the  narrow  compass  of  his  elector- 
ate. England  was  too  big  for  him.  If  he  had  noth- 
ing great  as  a  king,  he  had  nothing  bad  as  a  man ; 
and  if  he  does  not  adorn,  at  least  he  will  not  stain 
the  annals  of  this  country.  In  private  life  he  would 
have  been  loved  and  esteemed  as  a  good  citizen,  a 
good  friend,  and  a  good  neighbour.  Happy  were 
it  for  Europe,  happy  for  the  world,  if  there  were  not 
greater  kings  in  it." 

Chesterfield  makes  more  account  of  George  I.,  both 
as  king  and  as  man,  than  he  deserved.  As  king,  he 
does  stain  the  annals  of  the  country  over  which 
he  was  called  to  rule.  As  man,  Chesterfield  holds 
him  to  have  had  that  within  him  which  made  him 
worthy  of  esteem  as  a  citizen,  friend,  and  neighbour, 

—  and  yet  he  avers  of  such  a  man  that  he  was  lowly 
sensual  and  lazy ;    that  he   loved   the  company  of 
buffoons,   and   that   he  preferred   the   society   of   a 
woman  who  was  almost  an  idiot,  to  that  of  a  wife  who 
was  accomplished,  and  whom  he  could  never  prove 
unfaithful.     He  was   unfit  for  a  king,  we  are   told, 
because  he  was  disinclined  to  oppression,  and  yet  he 
kept  that  wife  for  more  than  thirty  years  a  prisoner  ; 

—  but  oppression  toward  a  wife  was  not  a  vice  in  the 
estimation  of  the  courtly  Chesterfield. 

George  had  doubtless  many  minor  provocations 
during  his  reign,  calculated  to  affect  his  temper  un- 
favourably. The  pulpit  occasionally  reechoed  against 
him,  as  the  priests  more  privately  used  to  denounce 


a 


F  THE  QUEENS  '  »ND 

i   he  passed    most  of   h  had 

him,  was  very  little  above  an  ic 
;lone  could  make  him  act,  and  then 
only  to  get  rid  of  it.     His  views  and  affections  w 
singly  confined  to  the  narrow  compass  of  his  elector- 
ate.    England  was  too  big  for  him.     If  he  had  noth- 
ing great  as  a  king,  he  had  nothing  bad  as  a  man ; 
and  if  he  does  not  adorn,  at  least  he  will  not  stain 
the  annals  of  this  country.     In  private  life  he  would 
have  been  loved  and  esteemed  as  a  good  citizen,  a 
and  a  good  neighbour.      Happy  were 
-vorld,  if  there  were  not 


•d   the    society  of   a 

woman  who  was  almost  an  idiot,  to  that  of  a  wife  who 
accomplished,  and  whom  he  could  never  prove 
unfaithful.     He  was   unfit  for  a  king,  we  are   told, 
because  he  clined  to  oppression,  and  yet  he 

kept  tha  or  more  than  thirty  years  a  prisoner  ; 

—  but  oppression  toward  a  wife  was  not  a  vice  in  the 
estimation  of  the  courtly  Chesterfield. 

•ss    many  minor  provocations 
during  ,  -ed  to  affect  his  tenv 


George  the  First 

Photogravure  from  the  fainting  by  Sir  G.  Kneller 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  259 

the  vices  of  Richard  ;  and  zealous  clergymen,  turned 
authors,  took  the  white  horse  of  Hanover  as  a  symbol, 
and  applied  to  it  the  passage  from  Revelation,  in 
which  it  is  said  :  "  I  looked,  and  beheld  a  pale  horse, 
and  his  name  that  sat  on  him  was  Death,  and  Hell 
followed  with  him." 

As  a  sample  of  the  graciousness  of  the  king,  we 
are  told  that  his  carriage  having  broken  down  on  one 
occasion,  when  travelling  to  Hanover,  he  found  tem- 
porary refuge  in  the  house  of  a  gentleman.  In  the 
room  to  which  he  was  ushered,  there  hung  the  full- 
length  of  a  person  unknown  to  him,  yet  in  royal 
robes.  The  owner  of  the  portrait,  with  some  con- 
fusion, explained  that  he  had  known  the  Chevalier 
when  at  Rome,  and  that  this  picture  was  a  present 
from  him.  The  king  is  supposed  to  have  been  very 
gracious,  because,  instead  of  giving  way  to  an  explo- 
sion of  wrath,  he  confined  himself  to  observing, 
"  Upon  my  word,  it  is  very  like  the  family." 

He  received  a  severer  touch  from  an  old  officer 
who  had  been  intimate  with  him  before  his  accession 
to  the  throne,  but  who  did  not  appear  to  offer  him 
congratulations  upon  his  succeeding  to  the  title.  On 
inquiry  being  made  as  to  the  cause,  the  veteran 
replied,  "  I  will  willingly  smoke  a  pipe  with  him  as 
Elector  of  Hanover ;  but  I  cannot  recognise  in  him  a 
King  of  Great  Britain  ! "  Considering  that  half  the 
Hanoverian  family  were  Jacobites,  this  speech  was 
not  so  perilous  as  it  sounds.  Besides,  the  union  of 
England  with  the  electorate  of  Hanover  was  not 
popular  in  the  latter  locality,  particularly  when  it  was 
discovered  that  if  Hanover  was  in  any  way  wronged, 
England  would  not  interfere  to  redress  it,  whereas  no 


260  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

sooner  was  England  at  feud  with  any  Continental 
power,  but  Hanover  was  the  first  to  feel  that  power's 
resentment. 

His  right  to  the  throne  was  sometimes  questioned, 
with  ingenuity,  even  in  England.  Thus,  when  the 
flighty  Duchess  of  Buckinghamshire  was  refused  pas- 
sage in  her  own  carriage  through  a  part  of  the  park 
reserved  for  the  royal  family,  she  protested  to  the 
king,  that  if  royalty  only  had  the  right  of  crossing 
the  privileged  line,  he  had  no  more  claim  to  go  there 
than  she  had.  He  wisely  laughed,  and  gave  permission 
to  the  mad  duchess  to  drive  whithersoever  she  pleased. 
He  was  annoyed,  nevertheless,  at  this  and  other  jests 
of  a  like  nature ;  and  if  he  never  named  his  wife, 
as  George  II.  never  in  his  later  days  named  his 
mother,  it  was  because  the  enemies  of  the  dynasty 
pretended  to  trace  in  the  features  of  the  second 
George  a  likeness  to  Count  Konigsmark,  his  mother's 
gallant  cavalier.  The  Whigs  had  denied  the  legiti- 
macy of  the  son  of  James  II.,  and  the  Tories 
embraced  with  eagerness  an  opportunity  to  deny 
that  of  the  heir  of  Brunswick. 

Although  the  king  could  not  speak  English,  he 
appears  to  have  understood  it  well  enough  when  it 
was  spoken,  to  save  Sir  Robert  Walpole  the  trouble 
of  addressing  him  in  very  indifferent  Latin.  He 
would  hardly  otherwise  have  had  the  great  hall  at 
Hampton  Court  fitted  up,  in  1718,  for  the  perform- 
ance of  English  plays.  The  king's  company  were  to 
have  played  there  throughout  the  summer,  but  the 
hall  was  not  ready  for  them  till  the  end  of  Sep- 
tember, by  which  time  Drury  Lane  reopened  for 
its  usual  autumn- winter  season,  and  "  His  Majesty's 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  261 

Servants "  played  in  his  presence  only  seven  times. 
They  were  under  the  direction  of  Steele,  who,  in 
place  of  being  rewarded  with  a  government  appoint- 
ment for  his  political  services,  had  got  nothing  more 
than  some  theatrical  privileges.  The  plays  repre- 
sented were  "  Hamlet,"  on  the  23d  September ;  "  Sir 
Courtly  Nice,"  "  The  Constant  Couple,"  "  Love  for 
Money,"  "Volpone,  or  the  Fox,"  and  "Rule  a  Wife 
and  Have  a  Wife."  Shakespeare's  "  Henry  the  Eighth  " 
was  the  king's  favourite  play.  On  one  night  of  its 
representation,  he  listened  attentively  to  the  scene  in 
which  Henry  commands  Wolsey  to  write  letters  of 
indemnity  to  those  counties  in  which  the  payment  of 
taxes  had  been  disputed  ;  and  when  he  heard  Wolsey's 
aside  to  Cromwell  — 

"  Let  it  be  noised 

That  through  our  intervention,  this  revokement 

And  pardon  comes,"  — 

the  king  turned  to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  said, 
"  You  see,  George,  what  you  have  one  day  to  expect." 
His  Majesty  could  not  have  been  so  very  poor  an 
English  scholar,  if  he  could  thus  enjoy,  comprehend, 
and  apply  passages  from  Shakespeare.  The  other 
plays  are,  indeed,  quite  as  difficult  for  a  foreigner 
to  understand';  and  George  I.  must  have  had  a  very 
fair  acquaintance  with  our  language,  if  he  were  able 
to  follow  Gibber  in  "  Sir  Courtly,"  laugh  at  the  jokes 
of  Pinkethman  in  "  Crack,"  feel  the  heartiness  of 
Miller  in  "  Hothead,"  be  interested  in  the  "  Testi- 
mony "  of  Johnson,  sympathetic  with  the  "  Surly  "  of 
Thurmond,  enjoy  the  periods  of  Booth  in  "  Farewell," 
or  the  aristocratic  spirit  of  Mills  in  "  Lord  Bellguard." 


262  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

The  ladies  in  the  play  "  Leonore,"  acted  before  him 
by  Mrs.  Porter,  and  "Violante,"  played  by  Mrs. 
Younger,  have  also  some  things  to  say  which  might 
well  puzzle  one  not  to  the  matter  born.  But  George 
must  have  comprehended  all ;  for  he  so  thoroughly 
enjoyed  all,  that  Steele  told  Lord  Sunderland,  on 
being  asked  how  his  Majesty  liked  the  entertainment, 
"  So  terribly  well,  my  lord,  that  I  was  afraid  I 
should  have  lost  all  my  actors ;  for  I  was  not  sure 
the  king  would  not  keep  them  to  fill  the  places  at 
court,  which  he  saw  them  so  fit  for  in  the  play,"  — 
a  remark  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  trenchant  wit 
of  "  Sir  Richard." 

For  the  entertainment,  the  king  paid  the  travelling 
expenses  of  the  actors  down  to  Hampton,  amounting 
to  fifty  pounds  each  night  for  the  entire  company, 
and  sent  a  couple  of  hundred  pounds  to  Steele  and 
the  other  managers.  That  he  loved  the  theatre  is 
not  surprising  ;  the  tastes  of  the  stage  were  as  gross 
as  his  own ;  and  the  descendant  of  Wodin  could 
complacently  savour  the  incense  offered  him  in  such 
lines  as  one  which  occurs  in  the  "Generous  Con- 
queror, or  Timely  Discovery,"  in  which  the  author 
assured  him  that  — 

"  The  gods  and  godlike  kings  can  do  no  wrong ! " 

Compared  with  which,   the  line  of   Cowper,  which 
says,  that 

"  Great  princes  have  great  pleasures," 

is  very  trite  indeed. 

Both    George's   laureates   were   indifferent  poets. 
He  appointed  Rowe  soon  after  his  accession,   and 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  263 

Eusden's  lines  to  the  lord  chamberlain  (Duke  of 
Newcastle),  on  his  marriage  with  Lady  Henrietta 
Godolphin,  procured  for  that  tipsy  poet  the  battered 
laurel  crown.  So  Gibber's  "Nonjuror,"  written  in 
favour  of  the  Hanover  succession,  and  against  the 
Non jurors  and  Jacobites,  then  abounding  in  London, 
got  him  such  persecution  from  those  rebellious  per- 
sons, that  it  is  supposed  to  have  obtained  for  him, 
by  way  of  compensation,  the  wreath  of  the  laureate, 
presented  by  George  II. 

Toland  describes  George,  when  he  was  elector, 
and  residing  near  the  prison-house  of  Sophia  Doro- 
thea, as  being  exceedingly  well  informed  on  English 
questions ;  but  the  truth  is,  he  knew  so  little  of  the 
constitution  and  customs  of  the  country  over  which 
he  was  to  reign,  that,  on  ascending  the  throne,  he 
told  his  ministers  that,  from  his  want  of  knowledge 
on  those  subjects,  he  should  place  himself  entirely 
in  their  hands,  and  be  governed  by  them.  "  Then," 
added  he,  "you  become  completely  answerable  for 
everything  that  I  do."  He  was  not  even  aware  of 
his  constitutional  exemption  from  responsibility. 

If  this  looks  like  a  low  sort  of  cunning,  on  the 
other  hand  it  must  be  allowed  that  he  was  not  with- 
out wit,  and  he  could  say  a  graceful  thing  in  a  grace- 
ful way,  when  an  opportunity  offered,  and  his  humour 
wore  its  brighter  side  outward.  To  a  German  noble- 
man, who  once  congratulated  him  on  being  sovereign 
at  once  of  England  and  Hanover,  he  happily  remarked, 
"  Rather  congratulate  me  on  having  such  a  subject 
as  Newton  in  the  one,  and  Leibnitz  in  the  other." 
His  declaration  of  principles  made  to  Sir  Peter  King, 
recorder  of  London,  at  the  first  levee  after  the  acces- 


264  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

sion,  and  intended,  through  that  officer,  for  the  edifi- 
cation of  the  citizens  at  large,  was  at  least  tersely, 
if  not  truly,  given :  "  I  never  forsake  a  friend,"  so 
ran  the  phrase;  "I  will  endeavour  to  do  justice  to 
everybody ;  and  I  fear  nobody."  Of  the  three  parts 
of  this  sentence,  the  latter  alone  was  founded  on 
truth. 

Less  happy  was  the  expression  of  an  idea,  called 
up  by  the  splendour  of  his  own  coronation,  when  he 
observed  to  Lady  Cooper  that  the  sight  of  the  place 
brought  to  his  thoughts  the  Day  of  Judgment.  The 
lady  replied,  in  the  bad  taste  of  the  day,  and  with 
little  honesty  of  judgment,  "  Well  may  it  be  so,  your 
Majesty ;  for  it  is  truly  the  resurrection  of  England 
and  all  faithful  subjects." 

More  happy  was  his  own  answer,  on  being  chal- 
lenged by  a  masked  lady  at  a  court  masquerade,  to 
drink  to  the  health  of  the  Pretender.  "  Very  will- 
ingly," said  he,  "and  to  that  of  all  unfortunate 
princes ! "  He  thoroughly  enjoyed  the  pleasantry 
of  others ;  was  delighted  with  Doctor  Savage's  merry 
observation,  that  he  had  failed  to  convert  the  Pope 
at  Rome,  because  he  had  nothing  better  to  offer  him  ; 
and  very  truly  observed  of  a  Jacobite,  who  had  been 
often  arrested,  and  as  often  discharged  for  lack  of 
proof,  and  who,  on  the  breaking  out  of  the  rebellion, 
requested  that,  as  he  of  course  would  be  again  arrested, 
he  begged  it  might  be  done  at  once,  as  he  wanted  to 
go  into  Devonshire,  —  "  Pooh,  pooh  !  "  said  the  king ; 
"there  can  be  but  little  harm  in  one  who  writes  so 
pleasantly."  Many  of  his  subjects,  however,  for  no 
more  heinous  crime,  were  most  oppressively  and 
cruelly  used. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  265 

Still,  his  gaiety  well  balanced  his  austerity.  This 
is  well  instanced  in  the  case  of  Doctor  Lockier,  who 
was  a  favourite  with  the  king,  and  whose  continued 
absence  from  court  so  perplexed  his  Majesty,  that  he 
sent  the  Duchess  of  Lancaster  to  him,  with  an  invi- 
tation to  an  evening  party.  The  doctor  declined  to 
accept  it,  on  the  ground  that  he  was  seeking  prefer- 
ment from  the  ministers,  and  that  his  chance  of 
success  would  be  marred,  were  they  to  suspect  him 
of  keeping  company  with  their  master.  George  laugh- 
ingly pronounced  the  reverend  place-hunter  to  be  in 
the  right ;  and  when  the  latter,  some  weeks  afterward, 
kissed  hands,  upon  being  appointed  Dean  of  Peter- 
borough, the  king  whispered  to  him,  before  he  arose, 
"Well,  doctor,  I  hope  you  will  not  be  afraid  now 
to  come  and  see  me  again  in  the  evening." 

Lockier' s  dread  of  being  suspected  to  be  on  friendly 
terms  with  the  monarch  was  not  unreasonable;  for 
a  similar  condition  of  things,  the  king's  personal 
friend,  and  clerk  of  the  closet,  Doctor  Younger,  with 
whom  he  was  wont  to  converse  familiarly  in  German, 
was  officially  dismissed  from  his  post,  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  he  was  too  close  to  the  willing  ear 
of  the  sovereign.  "  Where  is  Doctor  Younger  ?  " 
asked  the  latter,  on  missing  his  ever-welcome  presence. 
"Sire,"  said  the  minister,  "he  is  dead."  "I  am 
truly  sorry  for  it,"  said  George ;  "  he  was  a  good 
man,  and  I  intended  to  do  something  for  him."  At 
a  subsequent  period,  on  one  of  his  progresses  through 
the  country,  he  saw  the  doctor  officiating  in  his 
cathedral,  at  Salisbury.  "  My  little  dean,"  said  the 
sovereign,  "  I  am  glad  to  see  you  alive ;  I  was  told 
you  were  dead.  Why  have  you  not  been  to  court  ? " 


266  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

The  dean  explained  that,  having  received  an  official 
letter,  informing  him  that  his  Majesty  no  longer 
required  his  services,  he  thought  it  would  be  un- 
becoming to  intrude  himself  on  his  Majesty's  presence. 
"  I  see,  I  see  how  it  is,"  said  the  king,  with  excusable 

warmth  ;  "  but,  by ,  you  shall  be  the  first  bishop 

I  will  make."  And  George  would  have  kept  his 
word,  only  that  the  dean  died  before  a  bishopric 
became  vacant. 

Where  the  ministers  could  lie,  the  menials  of 
course  could  steal.  A  Hanoverian  cook  at  the 
palace,  disgusted  at  the  rapacity  of  his  fellows,  who 
would  not  allow  him  to  share  in  their  plunder,  went 
and  complained  to  the  king  in  person.  He  asserted 
his  own  honesty,  but  declared  that  such  a  virtue 
resided  in  no  other  person  in  the  household.  "  Em- 
bezzlement," said  he,  "is  rife  in  the  kitchen,  despite 
all  I  can  do.  When  the  dishes  are  brought  from 
your  Majesty's  table,  one  steals  a  fowl,  another  a  pig, 
a  third  a  joint  of  meat,  another  a  pie,  and  so  on,  till 
there  is  nothing  left."  George,  who  saw  that  the 
sorrow  felt  was,  probably,  because  there  was  "  noth- 
ing left "  to  steal,  answered  :  "  I  can  put  up  with 
these  things ;  and  my  advice  to  you  is,  to  go  and 
steal  like  the  rest,  and  to  remember  to  take  enough." 
The  fellow  took  his  master  at  his  word,  and  became 
as  accomplished  in  peculiar  lightness  of  hand  as  the 
most  expert  of  the  impudent  cooks  immortalised  in 
Athenaeus. 

Before  concluding  this  chapter,  I  will  add  a  few 
notices  upon  the  children  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  — 
George,  and  the  daughter  named  after  her  mother. 

The  son  of  Sophia  of  Zell  was  the  pupil  of  her 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  267 

mother-in-law,  Sophia  of  Hanover ;  and  his  boyhood 
did  little  credit  to  the  system,  or  the  acknowledged 
good  sense  of  his  instructress. 

When  the  Earl  of  Macclesfield  was  at  Hanover,  in 
the  year  1700,  bearing  with  him  that  Act  of  Suc- 
cession which  secured  a  throne  for  the  husband  and 
son  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  that  son  George  Augustus 
was  not  yet  out  of  his  "  teens."  He  was  of  that  age 
at  which  a  prince  is  considered  wise  enough  to  rule 
kingdoms,  but  is  yet  incapable  of  governing  himself. 
At  that  time,  he  was  said  to  "  give  the  greatest  hopes 
of  himself  that  we,  or  any  people  on  earth,  could 
desire."  He  was  not  of  proud  stature,  indeed,  and 
Alexander  was  not  six  feet  high  ;  but  Toland  asserts, 
what  is  very  hard  to  believe,  that  George  possessed 
a  winning  countenance,  and  a  manly  aspect  and 
deportment.  In  later  years,  he  was  rigid  of  feature, 
and  walked  as  a  man  does  who  is  stiff  in  the  joints. 
He  was,  in  the  days  of  his  youth,  a  graceful  and  easy 
speaker;  that  is,  his  phrases  were  well  constructed, 
and  he  expressed  them  with  facility.  His  complexion 
was  fair,  and  his  hair  a  light  brown.  Like  his  father, 
he  spoke  Latin  fluently ;  and  English  much  better 
than  his  father;  but  with  a  decided  foreign  accent, 
like  William  of  Orange.  As  the  utmost  care  was 
taken,  according  to  Toland,  to  furnish  him  with  such 
other  accomplishments  as  are  fit  for  a  gentleman  and 
a  prince,  it  is  a  pity  that  he  made  so  unprofitable  a 
use  of  so  desirable  a  provision.  He  was  tolerably 
well-versed  in  that  history  which  his  minister,  Walpole, 
used  to  have  read  to  him  as  a  relaxation,  because,  as 
he  said,  it  was  not  true ;  but  history  to  him  was  not 
philosophy  teaching  by  example ;  for  though,  in  his 


268  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

earlier  years,  panegyrists  said  of  him,  not  only  that 
his  inclinations  were  virtuous,  but  that  he  was  "  wholly 
free  from  all  vice,"  his  life,  subsequently,  could  not 
be  so  characterised,  and  the  later  practice  marred 
the  fair  precedent.  But  let  Toland  limn  the  object 
of  his  love. 

"  These  acquired  parts,"  he  says,  "  with  a  gener- 
ous disposition  and  a  virtuous  inclination,  will  de- 
servedly render  him  the  darling  of  our  people,  and 
probably  grace  the  English  throne  with  a  most  know- 
ing prince."  In  the  popular  sense  of  the  term,  the 
last  words  cannot  be  denied  ;  and  yet  he  never  knew 
how  to  obtain,  or  cared  how  to  merit,  his  people's 
love.  "  He  learns  English  with  inexpressible  facility, 
and  has  not  only  learned  of  his  grandmother  to  have 
a  real  esteem  for  Englishmen,  but  he  likewise  enter- 
tains a  high  notion  of  the  wisdom,  goodness,  and 
power  of  the  English  government,  concerning  which 
I  heard  him,  to  my  great  satisfaction,  ask  several 
pertinent  questions,  and  such  as  betokened  no  mean 
or  common  observation.  I  was  surprised  to  find  he 
understood  so  much  of  our  affairs  already ;  but  his 
great  vivacity  will  not  let  him  be  ignorant  of  any- 
thing. There  is  nothing  more  to  be  wished,"  says 
Toland,  "but  that  he  be  proof  against  the  tempta- 
tions which  accompany  greatness,  and  defended  from 
the  poisonous  infection  of  flatterers,  who  are  the 
greatest  bane  of  society,  and  commonly  occasion  the 
ruin  of  princes,  if  not  in  their  lives,  yet,  at  least,  in 
their  fame  and  reputation."  It  was  under  the  tempta- 
tions alluded  to  that  George  Augustus  made  ship- 
wreck of  his  fame.  His  history,  however,  will 
be  traced  more  fully  hereafter.  At  present  we 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  269 

will   only  consider  the  career  and  character  of  his 
sister. 

The  daughter  of  Sophia  Dorothea,  four  years 
younger  than  her  brother,  was  fifteen  years  old  when 
the  Act  of  Succession  opened  a  throne  to  her  father, 
but  not  to  her  mother.  She  had  in  her  youth  sweet- 
ness of  manners,  fairness  of  features,  and  a  soft  and 
winning  voice.  Her  fair  brown  hair,  as  in  her 
mother's  case,  heightened  the  grace  and  charms  of  a 
fair  complexion  ;  and  her  blue  eyes  were  the  admira- 
tion of  the  poets,  and  the  inspiration  even  of  those 
whom  the  gods  had  not  made  poetical.  Her  features, 
taken  singly,  were  not  without  defect ;  but  the  ex- 
pression which  pervaded  them  was  a  good  substitute 
for  purely  unintellectual  beauty.  The  Electress 
Sophia  was,  if  not  her  governess,  the  superintendent 
of  her  governesses ;  and  the  training,  rigid  and 
formal,  failed  in  the  development  that  was  most  to 
be  desired.  Had  her  brother  died  childless,  the  suc- 
cession was  fixed  in  her  person,  and  thus  Prussia 
might  have  been  to  England  what  Hanover  has  been. 
"In  minding  her  discourse  to  others,"  says  Toland, 
"  and  by  what  she  was  pleased  to  say  to  myself,  she 
appears  to  have  a  more  than  ordinary  share  of  good 
sense  and  wit.  The  whole  town  and  court  commend 
the  easiness  of  her  manners,  and  the  evenness  of  her 
disposition,  but,  above  all  her  other  qualities,  they 
highly  extol  her  good  humour,  which  is  the  most 
valuable  endowment  of  either  sex,  and  the  foundation 
of  most  other  virtues.  Upon  the  whole,  considering 
her  personal  merit,  and  the  dignity  of  her  family,  I 
heartily  wish  and  hope  to  see  her  some  day  Queen  of 
Sweden."  This  hearty  wish  was  not  to  be  realised. 


270          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

The  younger  Sophia  Dorothea  became  the  wife  of  a 
brute,  and,  as  I  have  said,  the  mother  of  a  hero. 

I  have  already  noticed  how  the  Mark  of  Branden- 
burgh  became  a  kingdom.  The  new  kingdom  of 
Prussia  grew  in  strength  as  the  old  empire  of  Ger- 
many, split  into  numerous  independent  governments, 
increased  in  weakness.  The  second  monarch  of  the 
kingdom  just  named  was  Frederick  William,  to  whom 
the  daughter  of  Sophia  of  Zell  was  married  on  the 
28th  of  November,  1706;  shortly  after  which,  the 
newly  married  couple  became  King  and  Queen  of 
Prussia. 

The  bridegroom  was  a  man  of  few  virtues,  but 
of  many  and  great  vices.  He  was  not  destitute  of 
talent,  and  he  was  ungovernable  of  temper.  His 
conduct  to  his  wife  was  that  of  an  insane  savage. 
He  deprived  her  of  the  guardianship  of  her  children, 
and  kept  her  so  ill-provided  for,  that,  at  last,  had  it 
not  been  for  a  revenue  of  ^800  allowed  her  by  her 
brother,  George  II.,  she  would  have  been  worse  off 
than  the  lowest  "burgherin"  in  Berlin.  Out  of  the 
taxes  paid  by  the  people  of  England,  the  Queen  of 
Prussia  was  furnished  with  clean  linen,  and  some  of 
the  other  luxuries  and  necessaries  of  life. 

Her  husband  was  at  the  time  immensely  rich,  and 
parsimonious  beyond  parallel.  A  hundred  and  twenty 
millions  of  dollars  lay  unfructifying  in  the  cellars  of 
the  palace ;  and  he  had  a  cabinet  full  of  gold,  which 
he  gave  to  his  wife  —  to  take  care  of.  He  compelled 
his  nobles  to  part  with  their  estates  at  a  nominal 
price,  and  farmed  his  lands  to  tax-gatherers,  who 
hugely  plundered  the  tenants,  and  were  as  profoundly 
fleeced  in  return  by  their  gracious  king.  His  am- 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  271 

bassador  at  The  Hague  cut  his  throat  with  the  only 
razor  the  poor  fellow  possessed,  driven  frantic,  as  he 
was,  by  being  reduced  to  poverty,  for  a  very  slight 
offence.  He  had  cut  down  some  wood  for  fuel  in 
the  garden  attached  to  his  official  residence,  which 
was  the  property  of  the  Prussian  government,  or 
rather  king.  The  latter  immediately  mulcted  him 
of  a  whole  year's  salary  ;  and  this,  modest  as  the 
amount  was,  reducing  him  to  most  miserable  straits, 
the  poor  envoy,  doubly  hurt,  by  the  disgrace  and  the 
injury,  took  up  his  solitary  razor,  and,  in  the  spirit  of 
a  Japanese  noble,  resorted  to  a  suicide  as  a  specific 
for  his  duplex  wrong. 

The  worst  feature  in  the  character  of  the  royal 
madman,  however,  was  his  terrible  hatred  of  women. 
In  the  streets  they,  and  indeed  the  men  also,  fled  at 
his  approach :  the  latter  he  allowed  to  escape  with  a 
curse ;  but  if  a  woman  came  within  reach  of  him,  he 
would  kick  at  her,  punch  her  head  with  his  iron  fist, 
or  smite  her  with  his  cane.  It  is  not  wonderful  that 
the  same  man  attempted  the  life  of  his  own  son ;  but 
it  is  wonderful  that  his  subjects  did  not  fling  the 
monster  into  the  turbid  waters  of  his  own  river 
Spree. 

Of  the  marriage  of  this  couple,  a  princess,  Fred- 
erica  Sophia  Wilhelmina,  was  the  first  child.  She 
was  born  in  1707.  Before  she  was  twelve  years  old, 
she  was  "  beaten  into  plaster  "  by  father,  servant,  and 
governesses,  and  was,  as  well-beaten  children  generally 
are,  cunning,  bold,  and  mendacious.  Of  this  child, 
and  even  at  this  early  age,  her  mother  was  unwise 
enough  to  make  a  confidant ;  telling  her  of  her  own 
miseries,  and  employing  her  as  a  spy  upon  her  father, 


272  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

especially  in  his  drunken  and  unsuspicious  hours. 
This  led  to  scenes  which  would  seem  as  farcical  as 
an  Adelphi  burletta,  were  it  not  that  they  were  not 
farces,  but  terrible  realities ;  and  in  them  we  see  a 
mother  lying  to  her  husband,  again  lying  to  her 
child,  teaching  the  latter  to  lie  to  her  sire,  who, 
exasperated  by  discovery  or  suspicion,  pursues  the 
criminals  to  every  conceivable  and  inconceivable 
hiding-place,  routing  them  out  with  his  crutched 
stick,  and  following  them  with  oaths  and  menaces, 
as  they  flee  before  him  with  prayers  and  screams. 
The  queen  even  purchased  the  alliance  of  her 
menials,  and  these  took  her  money,  and  betrayed 
her  to  the  king.  The  menials,  however,  appear  to 
have  been  quite  as  irreproachable  as  many  of  the 
nobler  courtiers,  —  among  whom  it  would  have  been 
difficult  to  find  one  woman  virtuous,  or  one  man 
honest.  Not  that  these  lacked  beyond  the  circle 
of  mere  courtiers.  The  queen  herself,  with  all  her 
heavy  faults,  was  blameless  in  her  character  of  wife 
and  woman ;  and  there  were  honest  hearts  beneath 
many  a  blue  uniform  in  Berlin  ;  but  a  hideous  tin- 
cleanness  of  sentiment  and  spirit  stuck  like  a  leprosy 
to  the  souls  and  actions  of  the  very  best  among  them. 
The  marriage  of  the  daughter  was  a  consummation 
the  most  devoutly  wished  for  by  the  mother ;  and  at 
one  time  it  had  been  determined  to  marry  the  two 
grandchildren  of  George  I.,  Frederick,  Duke  of 
Gloucester  (afterward  Prince  of  Wales),  and  his 
sister  Amelia,  to  the  daughter  and  son  of  King  Fred- 
erick and  Queen  Sophia.  George  I.  himself  went  to 
Berlin,  in  1723,  to  further  this  match,  but  it  never 
came  to  the  much  desired  conclusion. 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  273 

In  the  meantime,  the  Prussian  king  drank  harder 
than  ever ;  and  when  he  was  sick,  but  not  sorry, 
after  these  debauches,  he  would  sing  psalms  and 
preach  sermons  to  his  family,  who,  laughing  at  him 
in  return,  generally  got  well  thrashed  before  the  end 
of  the  service.  In  one  desponding  fit  he  resolved  to 
abdicate,  take  a  small  house  in  the  country,  make  his 
daughter  wash  the  linen,  employ  his  son  in  marketing, 
and  set  his  consort  to  the  spit.  To  inure  them  to 
their  destined  change  of  circumstances,  he  employed 
barbarities  which  have  been  truly  described  as  dis- 
graceful to  human  nature.  No  brute  beast  could 
more  have  disregarded  decency  in  presence  of  its 
offspring.  No  madman  ever  ended  a  more  terrific 
career  of  outrage  before  wife  and  children,  by  an 
attempt  at  hanging,  than  he  did.  And  few  wives 
would  have  followed  the  example  of  Sophia  Dorothea, 
and  have  cut  down  the  brute,  only  to  be  the  victim  of 
his  further  brutalities.  The  lives  of  both  wife  and 
children  were  more  than  once  very  nearly  sacrificed 
by  his  assassin-like  cruelties.  The  detail  of  them  is 
sickening  in  the  extreme.  His  most  bitter  disap- 
pointment lay  in  the  fact  that  he  could  not  find 
proof  of  treason  in  his  children  whereby  to  be  au- 
thorised to  put  them  both  to  death,  —  "  that  rascal 
Fritz,  and  that  hussy  Wilhelmina." 

I  need  not  here  repeat  that  well-known  story  which 
tells  of  the  attempt  made  by  the  young  prince  to  es- 
cape from  his  father's  brutalities  :  how  it  ended  in  the 
violent  death  of  the  prince's  friend,  and  how  it  had 
well-nigh  ended  in  the  murder  of  the  son  himself. 

Wilhelmina  was  ultimately  married  to  the  little 
Prince  of  Baireuth  ;  and  the  marriage  and  the  life 


274  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

which  followed  thereupon  have  much  more,  in  their 
narration,  the  air  of  a  pantomime  than  of  prosaic 
history.  The  wedding  was  comically  ceremonious; 
the  bride's  sister  endeavoured  to  seduce  the  bride- 
groom ;  and  after  the  young  couple  had  departed 
with  their  suite,  they  were  greeted  on  their  passage 
by  bodies  of  "  notables,"  who  were  huge  living  cari- 
catures, with  the  addition  of  being  very  dirty.  They 
did  not  reach  their  palace  before  the  ponderous  car- 
riage which  bore  them  had  broken  down  and  rolled 
the  illustrious  travellers  into  the  mud. 

It  would  lead  me  too  much  away  from  my  subject 
to  describe  the  princess's  father-in-law,  —  the  mar- 
grave who  had  read  but  two  books,  had  a  purse  as 
ill-furnished  as  his  mind,  and  yet  never  walked  to  his 
cold  meat  without  a  flourish  from  a  couple  of  cracked 
trumpets  to  announce  that  event  to  the  world,  and  bid 
lesser  potentates  sit  down. 

The  same  pantomimic  aspect  rested  on  all  the  other 
personages,  and  on  all  the  furniture,  appointments, 
and  incidents  of  the  court.  Everything  was  of  an 
exaggerated  character,  even  the  vices ;  and  when  the 
court  drank,  stupendous  inebriety  followed,  with  acci- 
dents to  match  — -  which  even  pantomimes  forbear  to 
bring  before  the  public.  We  hear,  too,  of  princesses 
with  noses  like  beet-root,  and  maids  of  honour  so  fat 
that  they  cannot  sit  down,  and  never  stoop  to  kiss  a 
hand  without  rolling  over  on  the  carpet. 

But  to  return  to  the  daughter  of  our  Sophia  of 
Zell.  The  Queen  of  Prussia  had  negotiated  a  mar- 
riage between  her  son  Frederick  (not  yet  the 
"  Great ")  and  a  princess  of  Brunswick.  She  openly 
spoke  of  her  intended  daughter-in-law  with  ridicule 


SOPHIA  DOROTHEA  275 

and  disgust,  and  was  not  more  reserved  even  in  the 
poor  lady's  presence.  The  queen  survived  her  brutal 
husband,  whose  last  act  was  to  bid  her  get  up  and 
see  him  die.  She  obeyed,  and  the  king  duly  per- 
formed the  feat  which  he  had  called  her  to  witness. 
Her  after-life  was  more  happy,  and  the  virtues  she 
exhibited  during  its  course  tend  to  prove  that  the 
tyranny,  cruelty,  and  filthy  insults  of  which  she  had 
been  made  the  victim  by  her  husband,  alone  rendered 
the  wretched  woman  not  merely  a  slave,  but,  as  slaves 
are  wont  to  be,  careless  in  the  observation  of  strict 
proprieties.  As  the  revered  mother  of  the  great  Fred- 
erick, she  lived  on  to  the  year  1757,  when  she  died  at 
the  allotted  age  of  man,  threescore  years  and  ten. 
The  present  King  of  Prussia  is  a  lineal  descendant 
of  Sophia  Dorothea  of  Zell  through  this  daughter, 
the  second  queen  that  wore  the  Prussian  crown.  He 
presides  in  Berlin,  the  mere  viceroy  of  the  Tsar. 

But  it  is  time  to  turn  from  this  record  of  incidents 
of  the  times  of  Sophia  and  George  Louis,  to  that  of 
circumstances  in  the  lives  of  their  successors.  Of 
the  former  pair  it  may  be  said,  that  Sophia  atoned 
for  some  possible  indiscretion  by  a  long  captivity, 
the  severity  of  which  tended  only  to  the  purifying 
and  perfecting  of  her  character.  Her  husband  has 
been  described  truly  in  a  few  words  by  Mr.  Macaulay, 
when  speaking  of  Pitt's  lines  on  the  monarch's  death  : 
"The  Muses  are  earnestly  entreated  to  weep  over 
the  urn  of  Caesar :  for  Caesar,  says  the  poet,  loved 
the  Muses ;  Caesar,  who  could  not  read  a  line  of 
Pope,  and  who  loved  nothing  but  punch  and  fat 
women." 


Caroline  Wilhelmina  Dorothea 

Wife  of  George  II. 

"  Da  seufzt  sie,  da  presst  sie  das  Herz  —  es  war 
Ja  Lieb  und  Gliick  nur  getraumet." 

—  GEIBEL. 


CHAPTER   I. 

BEFORE   THE    ACCESSION 

Birth  of  Princess  Caroline  —  Her  Early  Married  Life  —  Eulogised 
by  the  Poets  —  Gaiety  of  the  Court  of  the  Prince  and  Princess 
at  Leicester  House  —  Beauty  of  Miss  Bellenden  —  Mrs.  Howard, 
the  Prince's  Favourite  —  Intolerable  Crossness  of  the  Court  of 
George  the  First  —  Lord  Chesterfield  and  the  Princess  —  The 
Mad  Duchess — Buckingham  House — Rural  Retreat  of  the 
Prince  at  Richmond;  the  Resort  of  Wit  and  Beauty — Swift's 
Pungent  Verses  —  The  Fortunes  of  the  Young  Adventurers, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Howard  —  The  Queen  at  Her  Toilet  —  Mrs. 
Clayton,  Her  Influence  with  Queen  Caroline  —  The  Prince 
Ruled  by  His  Wife  —  Doctor  Arbuthnot  and  Dean  Swift  —  The 
Princess's  Regard  for  Newton  and  Halley  —  Lord  Macclesfield's 
Fall  —  His  Superstition,  and  That  of  the  Princess  —  Prince  Fred- 
erick's Vices  —  Not  Permitted  to  Come  to  England — Severe 
Rebuff  to  Lord  Hardwicke  —  Doctor  Mead  —  Courage  of  the 
Prince  and  Princess  —  The  Princess's  Friendship  for  Doctor 
Friend  —  Swift  at  Leicester  House  —  Royal  Visit  to  "  Bartlemy 
Fair." 

CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  was  the  daugh- 
ter of  John  Frederick,  Marquis  of  Brandenburgh-An- 
spach,  and  of  Eleanor  Erdmuth  Louisa,  his  second 
wife,  daughter  of  John  George,  Duke  of  Saxe-Eise- 
nach.  She  was  born  in  1683,  and  married  the  Elec- 
toral Prince  of  Hanover,  afterward  George  II.,  in  the 
year  1705.  Her  mother  having  remarried,  after  her 
father's  death,  when  Caroline  was  very  young,  the 
latter  left  the  court  of  her  stepfather,  George  IV., 
Elector  of  Saxony,  for  that  of  her  guardian,  Fred- 

279 


280          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

erick,  Elector  of  Brandenburgh,  afterward  King  of 
Prussia.  The  Electress  of  Brandenburgh  was  the 
daughter  of  Sophia,  Electress  of  Hanover,  and  sister 
of  George  I.  The  young  Caroline  was  considered 
fortunate  in  being  placed  under  the  care  of  a  lady 
who,  it  was  said  at  the  time,  and  perhaps  with  some 
reason,  would  assuredly  give  her  a  "  tincture  of  her 
own  politeness." 

Notice  has  already  been  taken  of  the  suitors  who 
early  offered  themselves  for  the  hand  of  the  youthful 
princess ;  and  for  what  excellent  reason  she  selected 
the  son  of  Sophia  Dorothea.  It  was  said,  when  she 
came  to  share  the  throne  of  England  with  her  hus- 
band, that  Heaven  had  especially  reserved  her  in 
order  to  make  Great  Britain  happy.  Her  early 
married  life  was  one  of  some  gaiety,  if  not  of  felic- 
ity ;  and  Baron  Pilnitz  says  in  his  memoirs,  that 
when  the  electoral  family  of  Hanover  was  called  to 
the  throne  of  this  country,  she  showed  more  cool 
carelessness  for  the  additional  grandeur,  than  any  of 
the  family,  whose  outward  indifference  was  a  matter 
of  admiration,  in  the  old  sense  of  that  word,  to  all 
who  beheld  it.  The  Princess  Caroline,  according 
to  the  baron,  particularly  demonstrated  that  she  was 
thoroughly  satisfied  in  her  mind  that  she  could  be 
happy  without  a  crown,  and  that  "both  her  father- 
in-law  and  her  husband  were  already  kings  in  her 
eyes,  because  they  highly  deserved  that  title."  Of 
her  conduct  during  the  period  she  was  Princess  of 
Wales,  the  same  writer  says  that  she  favoured 
neither  political  party,  and  was  equally  esteemed 
by  each.  This,  however,  is  somewhat  beside  the 
truth. 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  281 

The  poets  were  as  much  concerned  with  the  Prin- 
cess of  Wales  as  the  politicians.  Some  abused,  and 
some  adored  her.  Addison,  in  1714,  assured  her 
that  the  Muse  waited  on  her  person,  and  that  she 
herself  was  — 

"  Born  to  strengthen  and  to  grace  our  isle." 

The  same  writer  could  not  contemplate  the  daugh- 
ter of  Caroline,  but  that  his  prophetic  eye  professed 
to  — 

"  Already  see  the  illustrious  youths  complain, 
And  future  monarchs  doom'd  to  sigh  in  vain." 

Frederick  (Duke  of  Gloucester),  the  elder  and  less 
loved  son  of  Caroline,  was  not  yet  in  England,  but 
her  favourite  boy,  William,  was  at  her  side ;  and  of 
him  Addison  said,  that  he  had  "  the  mother's  sweet- 
ness and  the  father's  fire."  The  poet  went  on,  less 
to  prophesy  than  to  speculate  with  a  "perhaps,"  on 
the  future  destiny  of  William  of '  Cumberland,  and 
it  was  well  he  put  in  the  saving  word,  for  nothing 
could  be  less  like  fact  than  the  "fortune"  alluded 
to  in  the  following  lines: 

«*  For  thee,  perhaps,  even  now  of  kingly  race, 
Some  dawning  beauty  blooms  in  every  grace. 
Some  Caroline,  to  Heaven's  dictates  true, 
Who,  while  the  sceptred  rivals  vainly  sue, 
Thy  inborn  worth  with  conscious  eyes  shall  see, 
And  slight  th'  imperial  diadem  for  thee." 

Of  the  princess  herself,  he  says  more  truly,  that 
she  — 

"  with  graceful  ease 
And  native  majesty  is  form'd  to  please." 


282  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

And  he  adds,  that  the  stage,  growing  refined,  will 
draw  its  finished  heroines  from  her,  who  was  herself 
known  to  be  "  skill'd  in  the  labours  of  the  deathless 
Muse." 

In  short,  Parnassus  was  made  to  echo  with  eulo- 
gies of  or  epigrams  upon  this  royal  lady.  Of  the 
quarrel  between  George  I.  and  his  son  mention  has 
been  already  made.  For  years  together,  the  king 
never  addressed  a  word  to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  but 
the  princess  would  compel  him,  as  Count  Broglio, 
the  French  ambassador,  writes,  to  answer  the  remarks 
which  she  addressed  to  him  when  she  encountered 
him  "in  public."  But  even  then,  says  the  count, 
"he  only  speaks  to  her  on  these  occasions  for  the 
sake  of  decorum."  She-devil,  was  the  application 
commonly  employed  by  the  amiable  king  to  desig- 
nate his  high-spirited  daughter-in-law. 

The  Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales,  on  withdraw- 
ing from  St.  James's,  established  their  court  in 
"Leicester  Fields."  Of  this  court,  Walpole  draws 
a  pleasant  picture.  It  must  have  been  a  far  livelier 
locality  than  that  of  the  king,  whose  ministers  were 
the  older  Whig  politicians.  "  The  most  promising," 
says  Walpole,  "  of  the  young  lords  and  gentlemen  of 
that  party,  and  the  prettiest  and  liveliest  of  the  young 
ladies,  formed  the  new  court  of  the  Prince  and  Prin- 
cess of  Wales.  The  apartment  of  the  bedchamber- 
women  in  waiting  became  the  fashionable  evening 
rendezvous  of  the  most  distinguished  wits  and  beau- 
ties :  Lord  Chesterfield,  Lord  Stanhope,  Lord  Scar- 
borough, Carr  (Lord  Hervey),  elder  brother  of  the 
more  known  John,  Lord  Hervey,  and  reckoned  to 
have  superior  parts ;  General  (at  that  time  only 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  283 

Colonel)  Charles  Churchill,  and  others,  not  neces- 
sary to  mention,  were  constant  attendants ;  Miss 
Lepell,  afterward  Lady  Hervey,  my  mother,  Lady 
Walpole,  Mrs.  Selwyn,  mother  of  the  famous  George, 
and  herself  of  much  vivacity,  and  pretty ;  Mrs. 
Howard,  and,  above  all,  for  universal  admiration, 
Miss  Bellenden,  one  of  the  maids  of  honour.  Her 
face  and  person  were  charming ;  lively  she  was 
almost  to  ttourderie ;  and  so  agreeable  she  was,  that 
I  never  heard  her  mentioned  afterward  by  one  of  her 
contemporaries  who  did  not  prefer  her  as  the  most 
perfect  creature  they  ever  knew." 

To  this  pleasant  party  in  this  pleasant  resort,  the 
Prince  of  Wales  often  came,  —  his  chief  attraction 
being,  not  the  wit  or  worth  of  the  party,  but  the 
mere  beauty  of  one  of  the  party  forming  it.  This 
was  Miss  Bellenden,  who,  on  the  other  hand,  saw 
nothing  in  the  fair-haired  and  little  prince  that  could 
attract  her  admiration.  The  prince  was  never  famous 
for  much  delicacy  either  of  expression  or  sentiment, 
but  he  could  exhibit  a  species  of  wit  in  its  way. 
He  had  probably  been  contemplating  the  engraving 
of  the  visit  of  Jupiter  to  the  nymph  Danae  in  a 
shower  of  gold,  when  he  took  to  pouring  the  guineas 
from  his  purse,  in  Miss  Bellenden's  presence.  He 
seemed  to  her,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  comment 
she  made  upon  his  conduct,  much  more  like  a  villain- 
ous little  bashaw  offering  to  purchase  a  Circassian 
slave,  —  and  on  one  occasion,  as  he  went  on  count- 
ing the  glittering  coin,  she  exclaimed,  "  Sir,  I  cannot 
bear  it ;  if  you  count  your  money  any  more  I  will  go 
out  of  the  room."  She  did  even  better,  by  marrying 
the  man  of  her  heart,  Colonel  John  Campbell,  —  a 


284  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

step  at  which  the  prince,  when  it  came  to  his  knowl- 
edge, affected  to  be  extremely  indignant ;  and  never 
forgave  her  for  an  offence,  which  indeed  was  no 
offence,  and  required  no  forgiveness.  The  prince, 
like  that  young  Duke  of  Orleans  who  thought  he 
would  suffer  in  reputation  if  he  had  not  a  "favour- 
ite "  in  his  train,  let  his  regard  stop  at  Mrs.  Howard, 
another  of  his  wife's  bedchamber-women,  who  was 
but  too  happy  to  receive  such  regard,  and  to  return 
it  with  all  required  attachment  and  service. 

The  Princess  of  Wales,  during  the  reign  of  her 
father-in-law,  maintained  a  brilliant  court,  and  pre- 
sided over  a  gay  round  of  pleasures.  In  this  career 
she  gained  that  which  she  sought  after,  —  popularity. 
What  she  did  from  policy,  her  husband,  the  prince, 
did  from  taste ;  and  the  encouragement  and  promo- 
tion of  pleasure  were  followed  by  the  one  as  a  means 
to  an  end,  by  the  other  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure 
itself.  Every  morning  there  was  a  drawing-room  at 
the  princess's,  and  twice  a  week  the  same  splendid 
reunion  in  her  apartments,  at  night.  This  gave  the 
fashion  to  a  very  wide  circle ;  crowded  assemblies, 
balls,  masquerades,  and  ridottos  became  the  "  rage ; " 
and  from  the  fatigues  incident  thereto,  the  votaries 
of  fashion  found  relaxation  in  plays  and  operas. 

Quiet  people  were  struck  by  the  change  which 
had  come  over  court  circles  since  the  days  of 
"  Queen  Anne,  who  had  always  been  decent,  chaste, 
and  formal."  The  change  indeed  was  great,  but 
diverse  of  aspect.  Thus  the  court  of  pleasure  at 
which  Caroline  reigned  supreme,  was  a  court  where 
decency  was  respected ;  respected,  at  least,  as  much 
as  it  well  could  be,  at  a  time  when  no  superabun- 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  285 

dance  of  respect  for  decency  was  exhibited  in  any 
quarter.  Still,  there  was  not  the  intolerable  grossness 
in  the  house  of  the  prince  which  was  to  be  met  with 
in  the  very  presence  of  his  sire.  Lord  Chesterfield 
said  of  that  sire  that  "  he  had  nothing  bad  in  him 
as  a  man,"  and  yet  he  records  of  him  that  he  had  no 
respect  for  woman,  —  but  some  liking,  it  may  be 
added,  for  those  who  had  little  principle  and  much 
fat.  "He  brought  over  with  him,"  says  Chester- 
field, "  two  considerable  samples  of  his  bad  taste  and 
good  stomach,  —  the  Duchess  of  Kendal  and  the 
Countess  of  Darlington  ;  leaving  at  Hanover,  because 
she  happened  to  be  a  Papist,  the  Countess  von 
Platen,  whose  weight  and  circumference  was  little 
inferior  to  theirs.  These  standards  of  his  Majesty's 
tastes  made  all  those  ladies  who  aspired  to  his  favour, 
and  who  were  near  the  statutable  size,  strain  and 
swell  themselves,  like  the  frogs  in  the  fable,  to  rival 
the  bulk  and  dignity  of  the  ox.  Some  succeeded, 
and  others  burst."  If  the  house  of  the  son  was  not 
the  abode  of  all  the  virtues,  it  at  least  was  not  the 
sty  wherein  wallowed  his  sire.  Upon  the  change 
of  fashion,  Chesterfield  writes  to  Bubb  Dodington, 
in  1716,  the  year  when  Caroline  began  to  be  looked 
up  to  as  the  arbitress  of  fashion :  "  As  for  the  gay 
part  of  the  town,  you  would  find  it  much  more  flour- 
ishing than  when  you  left  it.  Balls,  assemblies,  and 
masquerades  have  taken  the  place  of  dull,  formal, 
visiting  days,  and  the  women  are  much  more  agree- 
able trifles  than  they  were  designed.  Puns  are 
extremely  in  vogue,  and  the  license  very  great.  The 
variation  of  three  or  four  letters  in  a  word  breaks  no 
squares,  insomuch  that  an  indifferent  punster  may 


286  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

make  a  very  good  figure  in  the  best  companies." 
The  gaiety  at  the  town  residence  of  the  prince  and 
princess  did  not,  however,  accompany  them  to  Rich- 
mond Lodge.  There  Caroline  enjoyed  the  quiet 
beauties  of  her  pretty  retreat,  which  was,  however, 
shared  with  her  husband's  favourite,  "  Mrs.  Howard." 

"Leicester  Fields"  was,  nevertheless,  not  always 
such  a  bower  of  bliss  as  Walpole  has  described  it, 
from  hearsay.  If  the  prince  and  ladies  were  on  very 
pleasant  terms,  the  princess  and  the  ladies  were 
sometimes  at  loggerheads,  with  as  little  regard  for 
bienseance  as  if  they  had  been  very  vulgar  people ; 
indeed,  they  often  were  exceedingly  vulgar  people 
themselves. 

It  was  with  Lord  Chesterfield  that  Caroline  Wil- 
helmina  Dorothea  was  most  frequently  at  very  dis- 
graceful issue.  Lord  Chesterfield  was  one  of  the 
prince's  court,  and  he  was  possessed  of  an  uncon- 
trollable inclination  to  turn  the  princess  into  ridicule. 
Of  course,  she  was  made  acquainted  with  this  pro- 
pensity of  the  refined  Chesterfield  by  some  amiable 
friend,  who  had  the  regard  which  friends,  with  less 
judgment  than  what  they  call  amiability,  generally 
have  for  one's  failings. 

Caroline,  perhaps  half  afraid  of  the  peer,  whom 
she  held  to  be  a  more  annoying  joker  than  a  genuine 
wit,  took  a  middle  course  by  way  of  correcting  Ches- 
terfield. It  was  not  the  course  which  a  woman  of 
dignity  and  refinement  would  have  adopted ;  but  it 
must  be  remembered  that,  at  the  period  in  question, 
the  princess  was  anxious  to  keep  as  many  friends 
around  her  husband  as  she  could  muster.  She  con- 
sequently told  Lord  Chesterfield,  half  in  jest  and  half 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  287 

in  earnest,  that  he  had  better  not  provoke  her,  for 
though  he  had  a  wittier,  he  had  not  so  bitter  a  tongue 
as  she  had,  and  any  outlay  of  his  wit,  at  her  cost, 
she  was  determined  to  pay,  in  her  way,  with  an  ex- 
orbitant addition  of  interest  upon  the  debt  he  made 
her  incur. 

The  noble  lord  had,  among  the  other  qualifications 
of  the  fine  gentleman  of  the  period,  an  alacrity  in 
lying.  He  would  gravely  assure  the  princess  that 
her  Royal  Highness  was  in  error ;  that  he  could 
never  presume  to  mimic  her ;  and  thereupon  he 
would  only  watch  for  a  turn  of  her  head  to  find 
an  opportunity  for  repeating  the  offence  which  he 
had  protested  could  not  possibly  be  laid  to  his  charge. 

Caroline  was  correct  in  asserting  that  she  had  a 
bitter  tongue.  It  was  under  control,  indeed ;  but 
when  she  gave  it  unrestricted  freedom,  its  eloquence 
was  not  well  savoured.  Indeed  her  mind  was  far 
less  refined  than  has  been  generally  imagined.  Many 
circumstances  might  be  cited  in  proof  of  this  asser- 
tion ;  but,  perhaps,  none  is  more  satisfactory,  or 
conclusive  rather,  than  the  fact  that  she  was  the 
correspondent  of  the  Duchess  of  Orleans,  whose 
gross  epistles  can  be  patiently  read  only  by  grossly 
inclined  persons ;  but  which,  nevertheless,  tell  so 
much  that  is  really  worth  knowing  that  students 
of  history  read,  blush,  and  are  delighted.  Of  this 
correspondence  we  shall  speak  in  a  subsequent 
chapter. 

The  Prince  of  Wales,  dissatisfied  with  his  resi- 
dences, entered  into  negotiations  for  the  purchase 
of  Buckingham  House.  That  mansion,  of  which 
more  will  be  said  when  we  come  to  speak  of  its 


288  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

royal  mistress,  Queen  Charlotte,  was  then  occupied 
by  the  Dowager  Duchess  of  Buckingham,  she  whose 
mother  was  Catherine  Sedley,  and  whose  father  was 
James  II.  She  was  the  mad  duchess,  who  always 
went  into  mourning,  and  shut  up  Buckingham  House, 
on  the  anniversary  of  the  death  of  her  grandfather, 
Charles  I.  The  duchess  thus  writes  of  the  negotia- 
tion in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Howard  : 

"If  their  Royal  Highnesses  will  have  everything 
stand  as  it  is,  —  furniture  and  pictures,  —  I  will  have 
.£3,000  per  annum.  Both  run  hazard  of  being 
spoiled;  and  the  last,  to  be  sure,  will  be  all  to  be 
new  bought,  whenever  my  son  is  of  age.  The  quan- 
tity the  rooms  take  cannot  be  well  furnished  under 
£10,000.  But  if  their  Highnesses  will  permit  all 
the  pictures  to  be  removed,  and  buy  the  furniture 
as  it  will  be  valued  by  different  people,  the  house 
shall  go  at  £2,000.  If  the  prince  or  princess  prefer 
much  the  buying  outright,  under  £60,000  it  will  not 
be  parted  with  as  it  now  stands;  and  all  his  Maj- 
esty's revenue  cannot  purchase  a  place  so  fit  for 
them,  nor  for  less  a  sum.  The  princess  asked  me 
at  the  drawing-room  if  I  would  not  sell  my  fine 
house.  I  answered  her,  smiling,  that  I  was  under 
no  necessity  to  part  with  it ;  yet,  when  what  I 
thought  was  the  value  of  it  should  be  offered,  per- 
haps my  prudence  might  overcome  my  inclination." 
Whether  the  sum  was  thought  too  much  by  the 
would-be  purchasers,  or  whether  the  capricious  duch- 
ess obeyed  inclination  rather  than  prudence,  is  not 
known  ;  but  the  negotiation  went  no  further. 

It  may  be  that  the  princess,  who  particularly 
affected  to  be  desirous  of  furthering  the  interests 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  289 

of  English  commerce,  had  some  inclination  to  pos- 
sess this  place  as  occupying  a  portion  of  the  locality 
on  which  James  I.  planted  his  famous  mulberry  gar- 
den, at  a  time  when  he  was  anxious  to  introduce  the 
mulberry  into  general  cultivation,  for  the  sake  of 
encouraging  the  manufacture  of  English  silks.  At 
all  events,  at  the  period  when  Caroline  expressed 
some  inclination  to  possess  a  residence,  which  did 
not  fall  into  the  hands  of  royalty  until  it  became 
the  property  of  Queen  Charlotte,  there  was  a  mul- 
berry garden  at  Chelsea,  the  owner  of  which  was  a 
Mrs.  Gale.  In  these  gardens  some  very  rich  and 
beautiful  satin  was  made,  from  English  silkworms, 
for  the  Princess  of  Wales,  who  took  an  extraordinary 
interest  in  the  success  of  "the  native  worm."  The 
experiments,  however,  patronised  as  they  were  by 
Caroline,  did  not  promise  a  realisation  of  sufficient 
profit  to  warrant  their  being  pursued  any  further. 

The  town  residence  of  the  prince  and  princess 
lacked,  of  course,  the  real  charms,  the  quieter 
pleasures,  of  the  lodge  at  Richmond.  The  estate 
on  which  the  latter  was  built  formed  part  of  the 
forfeited  property  of  the  Jacobite  Duke  of  Ormond. 

The  prince  and  princess  kept  a  court  at  Richmond, 
which  must  have  been  one  of  the  most  pleasant 
resorts  at  which  royalty  has  ever  presided  over 
fashion,  wit,  and  talent.  At  this  court  the  young 
(John)  Lord  Hervey  was  a  frequent  visitor,  at  a  time 
when  his  mother,  Lady  Bristol,  was  in  waiting  on  the 
princess,  and  his  brother,  Lord  Carr  Hervey,  held 
the  post  of  groom  of  the  bedchamber  to  the  prince. 
Of  the  personages  at  this  "young  court,"  the  right 
honourable  John  Wilson  Croker  thus  speaks  : 


290  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

"At  this  period,  Pope,  and  his  literary  friends, 
were  in  great  favour  at  this  'young  court,'  of  which, 
in  addition  to  the  handsome  and  clever  princess  her- 
self, Mrs.  Howard,  Mrs.  Selwyn,  Miss  Howe,  Miss 
Bellenden,  and  Miss  Lepell,  with  Lords  Chesterfield, 
Bathurst,  Scarborough,  and  Hervey,  were  the  chief 
ornaments.  Above  all,  for  beauty  and  wit  were  Miss 
Bellenden  and  Miss  Lepell,  who  seem  to  have 
treated  Pope,  and  been  in  return  treated  by  him, 
with  a  familiarity  that  appears  strange  in  our  more 
decorous  days.  These  young  ladies  probably  con- 
sidered him  as  no  more  than  what  Aaron  Hill 
described  him, — 

" '  Tuneful  Alexis,  on  the  Thames'  fair  side, 
The  ladies'  plaything  and  the  Muse's  pride.' n 

Mr.  Croker  notices  that  Miss  Lepell  was  called 
Mrs.,  according  to  the  fashion  of  the  time.  It  was 
the  custom  so  to  designate  every  single  lady  who 
was  old  enough  to  be  married. 

Upon  Richmond  Lodge,  Swift  showered  some  of 
his  most  pungent  verses.  He  was  there  more  than 
once,  when  it  was  the  scene  of  the  "young  court." 
Of  these  occasions  he  sang,  after  the  princess  had 
become  queen,  to  the  following  tune : 

"  Here  wont  the  dean,  when  he's  to  seek, 
To  sponge  a  breakfast  once  a  week, 
To  cry  the  bread  was  stale,  and  mutter 
Complaints  against  the  royal  butter. 
But  now  I  fear  it  will  be  said, 
No  butter  sticks  upon  his  bread. 
We  soon  shall  find  him  full  of  spleen, 
For  want  of  tattling  to  the  queen ; 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  291 

Stunning  her  royal  ears  with  talking  ; 
His  rev'rence  and  her  Highness  walking. 
Whilst  saucy  Charlotte, '  like  a  stroller, 
Sits  mounted  on  the  garden  roller. 
A  goodly  sight  to  see  her  ride, 
With  ancient  Mirmont  at  her  side. 
In  velvet  cap  his  head  is  warm, 
His  hat,  for  shame,  beneath  his  arm." 

During  a  large  portion  of  the  married  life  of 
George  Augustus  and  Caroline,  each  was  supposed 
to  be  under  the  influence  of  a  woman,  whose  real 
influence  was,  however,  overrated,  and  whose  impor- 
tance, if  great,  was  solely  so  because  of  the  undue 
value  attached  to  her  imaginary  influence.  Both 
those  persons  were  of  the  "  young  court,"  at  Leices- 
ter House  and  Richmond  Lodge. 

The  women  in  question  were  Mrs.  Howard,  the 
prince's  "favourite,"  and  Mrs.  Clayton,  bedchamber- 
woman,  like  Mrs.  Howard,  to  Caroline.  The  first 
lady  was  a  daughter  of  a  Knight  of  the  Bath,  Sir 
Henry  Hobart.  Early  in  life,  she  married  Mr. 
Howard,  "the  younger  brother  of  more  than  one 
Earl  of  Suffolk,  to  which  title  he  at  last  succeeded 
himself,  and  left  a  son  by  her,  who  was  the  last  earl 
of  that  branch."  The  young  couple  were  but  slen- 
derly dowered ;  the  lady  had  little  and  her  husband 
less.  The  court  of  Queen  Anne  did  not  hold  out  to 
them  any  promise  of  improving  their  fortune,  and 
accordingly  they  looked  around  for  a  locality  where 
they  might  not  only  discern  the  promise,  but  hope 
for  its  realisation.  Their  views  rested  upon  Hanover 
and  "  the  rising  sun  "  there,  and  thither,  accordingly, 

4  De  Roncy. 


292  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

they  took  their  way,  and  there  they  found  a  welcome 
at  the  hands  of  the  old  Electress  Sophia,  with  scanty 
civility  at  those  of  her  grandson,  the  electoral  prince. 

At  this  time,  the  fortunes  of  the  young  adventurers 
were  so  low,  and  their  aspirations  so  high,  that  they 
were  unable  to  give  a  dinner  to  the  Hanoverian  min- 
ister, till  Mrs.  Howard  found  the  means,  by  cutting 
off  a  very  beautiful  head  of  hair,  and  selling  it.  If 
she  did  this  in  order  that  she  might  not  incur  a  debt, 
she  deserves  some  degree  of  praise,  for  a  habit  of 
prompt  payment  was  not  a  fashion  of  the  time.  The 
sacrifice  probably  sufficed ;  for  it  was  the  era  of  full- 
bottomed  wigs,  which  cost  twenty  or  thirty  guineas, 
and  Mrs.  Howard's  hair,  to  be  applied  to  the  purpose 
named,  may  have  brought  her  a  dozen  pounds,  with 
which  a  very  recherche1  dinner  might  have  been  given, 
at  the  period,  to  even  the  most  gastronomic  of  Hun- 
overian  ministers,  and  half  a  dozen  secretaries  of 
legation  to  boot. 

The  fortune  sought  for  was  seized,  although  it 
came  but  in  a  questionable  shape.  After  the  lapse 
of  some  little  time,  the  lady  had  made  sufficient  im- 
pression on  the  hitherto  cold  Prince  George  Augustus 
to  induce  him,  on  the  accession  of  his  father  to  the 
crown  of  England,  to  appoint  her  one  of  the  bed- 
chamber-women to  his  wife,  Caroline,  Princess  of 
Wales. 

When  Mrs.  Howard  had  won  what  was  called  the 
"regard"  of  the  prince,  she  separated  from  her  hus- 
band. He,  it  is  true,  had  little  regard  for,  and  merited 
no  regard  from,  his  wife ;  but  he  was  resolved  that 
she  should  attain  not  even  a  bad  eminence,  unless 
he  profited  by  it.  He  was  a  wretched,  heartless, 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  293 

drunken,  gambling  profligate;  too  coarse,  even,  for 
the  coarse  fine  gentlemen  of  the  day.  When  he 
found  himself  deserted  by  his  wife,  therefore,  and 
discovered  that  she  had  established  her  residence  in 
the  household  of  the  prince,  he  went  down  to  the 
palace,  raised  an  uproar  in  the  courtyard,  before  the 
guards  and  other  persons  present,  and  made  vocifer- 
ous demands  for  the  restoration  to  him  of  a  wife 
whom  he  really  did  not  want.  He  was  thrust  out  of 
the  quadrangle  without  much  ceremony,  but  he  was 
not  to  be  silenced.  He  even  appears  to  have  inter- 
ested the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  in  the  matter. 
The  prelate  affected  to  look  upon  the  princess  as  the 
protectress  of  her  bedchamber-woman,  and  the  cause 
of  the  latter  living  separate  from  her  husband,  to 
whom  he  recommended,  by  letter,  that  she  should  be 
restored.  Walpole  says,  further,  that  the  archbishop 
delivered  an  epistle  from  Mr.  Howard  himself,  ad- 
dressed through  the  Princess  Caroline  to  his  wife, 
and  that  the  princess  "had  the  malicious  pleasure  of 
delivering  the  letter  to  her  rival." 

Mrs.  Howard  continued  to  reside  under  the  roof  of 
this  strangely  assorted  household.  There  was  no 
scandal  excited  thereby  at  the  period,  and  she  was 
safe  from  conjugal  importunity,  whether  at  St. 
James's  Palace  or  Leicester  House.  "The  case 
was  altered,"  says  Walpole,  "  when,  on  the  arrival  of 
summer,  their  Royal  Highnesses  were  to  remove  to 
Richmond.  Being  only  woman  of  the  bedchamber, 
etiquette  did  not  allow  Mrs.  Howard  the  entree  of 
the  coach,  with  the  princess.  She  apprehended  that 
Mr.  Howard  might  seize  her  upon  the  road.  To 
baffle  such  an  attempt,  her  friends,  John,  Duke  of 


294  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

Argyle,  and  his  brother,  the  Earl  of  Islay,  called  for 
her  in  the  coach  of  one  of  them  by  eight  o'clock  in 
the  morning  of  the  day  by  noon  of  which  the  prince 
and  princess  were  to  remove,  and  lodged  her  safely 
in  their  house  at  Richmond."  It  would  appear,  that 
after  this  period,  the  servant  of  Caroline  and  the 
favourite  of  George  Augustus  ceased  to  be  molested 
by  her  husband ;  and,  although  there  be  no  proof  of 
that  gentleman  having  been  "  bought  off,"  he  was  of 
such  character,  tastes,  and  principles,  that  he  cannot 
be  thought  to  have  been  of  too  nice  an  honour  to 
allow  of  his  agreeing  to  terms  of  peace  for  pecuniary 
"  consideration." 

George  thought  his  show  of  regard  for  Mrs.  How- 
ard would  stand  for  proof  that  he  was  not  "led"  by 
his  wife.  The  regard  wore  an  outwardly  Platonic 
aspect,  and  daily  at  the  same  hour  the  royal  admirer 
resorted  to  the  apartment  of  the  lady,  where  an  hour 
or  two  was  spent  in  "  small  talk,"  and  conversation  of 
a  generally  uninteresting  character. 

It  is  very  illustrative  of  the  peculiar  character  of 
George  Augustus,  that  his  periodical  visits  every  even- 
ing at  nine,  were  regulated  with  such  dull  punctu- 
ality, "  that  he  frequently  walked  about  his  chamber 
for  ten  minutes,  with  his  watch  in  his  hand,  if  the 
stated  minute  was  not  arrived." 

Walpole  also  notices  the  more  positive  vexations 
Mrs.  Howard  received  when  Caroline  became  queen, 
whose  head  she  used  to  dress,  until  she  acquired  the 
title  of  Countess  of  Suffolk.  The  queen,  it  is  said, 
delighted  in  subjecting  her  to  such  servile  offices, 
though  always  apologising  to  her  good  Howard. 
"Often,"  says  Walpole,  "her  Majesty  had  more 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  295 

complete  triumph.  It  happened  more  than  once 
that  the  king,  coming  into  the  room  while  the  queen 
was  dressing,  has  snatched  off  the  handkerchief,  and, 
turning  rudely  to  Mrs.  Howard,  has  cried,  '  Because 
you  have  an  ugly  neck  yourself,  you  hide  the 
queen's.' " 

One  other  instance  may  be  cited  here  of  Caroline's 
dislike  of  her  good  Howard.  "  The  queen  had  an 
obscure  window  at  St.  James's  that  looked  into  a 
dark  passage,  lighted  only  by  a  single  lamp  at  night, 
which  looked  upon  Mrs.  Howard's  apartment.  Lord 
Chesterfield,  on  Twelfth  Night  at  court,  had  won  so 
large  a  sum  of  money,  that  he  thought  it  not  prudent 
to  carry  it  home  in  the  dark,  and  deposited  it  with 
the  mistress.  Thence  the  queen  inferred  great  inti- 
macy, and  thenceforward  Lord  Chesterfield  could 
obtain  no  favour  from  court ;  and,  finding  himself 
desperate,  went  into  opposition."  But  this  is  antici- 
pating events.  Let  us  speak  of  the  other  bedcham- 
ber-woman of  the  Princess  of  Wales,  and  subsequently 
of  Queen  Caroline,  also  a  woman  of  considerable  note 
in  the  quiet  and  princely  circle  at  Leicester  House, 
and  the  more  brilliant  reunions  at  St.  James's  and 
Kensington.  She  was  a  woman  of  fairer  reputation, 
of  greater  ability,  and  of  worse  temper  than  Mrs. 
Howard.  Her  maiden  name  was  Dyves,  her  condi- 
tion was  of  a  humble  character,  but  her  marriage 
with  Sir  Robert  Clayton,  a  clerk  in  the  treasury, 
gave  her  importance  and  position,  and  opportunity  to 
improve  both.  Her  husband,  in  addition  to  his  treas- 
ury clerkship,  was  one  of  the  managers  of  the  Marl- 
borough  estates  in  the  duke's  absence,  and  this 
brought  his  wife  to  the  knowledge  and  patronage  of 


296  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  duchess.  The  only  favour  ever  asked  by  the 
latter  of  the  house  of  Hanover,  was  a  post  for  her 
friend  Mrs.  Clayton,  who  soon  afterward  was  ap- 
pointed one  of  the  bedchamber-women  of  Caroline, 
Princess  of  Wales. 

Mrs.  Clayton  has  been  as  diversely  painted  by 
Lord  Hervey  and  Horace  Walpole,  as  Chesterfield 
himself.  It  is  not  to  be  disputed,  however,  that  she 
was  a  woman  of  many  accomplishments,  of  not  so 
many  as  her  flatterers  ascribe  to  her,  but  of  more 
than  were  conceded  to  her  by  her  enemies.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  her  alleged  virtues.  Walpole 
describes  her  as  a  corrupt,  pompous  simpleton,  and 
Lord  Hervey  as  a  woman  of  great  intelligence,  and 
rather  ill-regulated  temper,  the  latter  preventing  her 
from  concealing  her  thoughts,  let  them  be  what  they 
might.  The  noble  lord  intimates,  rather  than  asserts, 
that  she  was  more  resigned  than  desirous  to  live  at 
court,  for  the  dirty  company  of  which  she  was  too 
good,  but  whom  she  had  the  honesty  to  hate  but  not 
the  hypocrisy  to  tell  them  they  were  good.  Hervey 
adds,  that  she  did  good,  for  the  mere  luxury  which 
the  exercise  of  the  virtue  had  in  itself.  Others  de- 
scribe her  as  corrupt  as  the  meanest  courtier  that 
ever  lived  by  bribes.  She  would  take  jewels  with 
both  hands,  and  wear  them  without  shame,  though 
they  were  the  fees  of  offices  performed  to  serve  others 
and  enrich  herself.  The  Duchess  of  Marlborough 
was  ashamed  of  her  protegee  in  this  respect,  if  there 
be  truth  in  the  story  of  her  Grace  being  indignant  at 
seeing  Mrs.  Clayton  wearing  gems  which  she  knew 
were  the  price  of  services  rendered  by  her.  Lady 
Wortley  Montagu  apologises  for  her  by  the  smart 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  297 

remark,  that  people  would  not  know  where  wine  was 
sold,  if  the  vendor  did  not  hang  out  a  bush. 

Of  another  fact  there  is  no  dispute,  —  the  intense 
hatred  with  which  Mrs.  Howard  and  Mrs.  Clayton 
regarded  each  other.  The  former  was  calm,  cool, 
cutting,  and  contemptuous  —  but  never  unladylike, 
always  self-possessed  and  severe.  The  latter  was  hot, 
eager,  and  for  ever  rendering  her  position  untenable 
for  want  of  temper,  and  therefore  lack  of  argument 
to  maintain  it.  Mrs.  Clayton,  doubtless,  possessed 
more  influence  with  the  queen  than  her  opponent 
with  the  king,  but  that  influence  has  been  vastly  over- 
rated. Caroline  only  allowed  it  in  small  matters,  and 
exercised  in  small  ways.  Mrs.  Clayton  was,  in  some 
respects,  only  her  authorised  representative,  or  the 
medium  between  her  and  the  objects  whom  she  de- 
lighted to  relieve  or  to  honour.  The  lady  had  some 
influence  in  bringing  about  introductions,  in  directing 
the  queen's  notice  to  works  of  merit,  or  to  petitions 
for  relief ;  but  on  subjects  of  much  higher  importance 
Caroline  would  not  submit  to  influence  from  the  same 
quarter.  On  serious  questions  she  had  a  better  judg- 
ment of  her  own  than  she  could  be  supplied  with  by 
the  women  of  the  bedchamber.  The  great  power 
held  by  Mrs.  Clayton  was  that  with  her  rested  to 
decide  whether  the  prayer  of  a  petitioner  should  or 
should  not  reach  the  eye  of  Caroline.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  she  was  flattered,  and  that  her  good  offices 
were  asked  for  with  showers  of  praise  and  compliment 
to  herself,  by  favour-seekers  of  every  conceivable 
class.  Peers  of  every  degree,  and  their  wives, 
bishops  and  poor  curates,  philosophers  well-to-do, 
and  authors  in  shreds  and  patches ;  sages  and  scio- 


298  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

lists ;  inventors,  speculators,  and  a  mob  of  "  beg- 
gars "  which  cannot  be  classed,  sought  to  approach 
Caroline  through  Mrs.  Clayton's  office,  and  humbly 
waited  Mrs.  Clayton's  leisure,  while  they  profusely 
flattered  her,  in  order  to  tempt  her  to  be  active  in 
their  behalf. 

Mrs.  Clayton,  despite  her  more  fiery  temper,  is  said 
to  have  been  a  "nicer"  woman  than  Mrs.  Howard. 
It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that  the  niceness 
of  the  nice  people  of  this  period  was  very  like  that 
of  Mrs.  Mincemode,  in  Odingsell's  comedy  of  "  The 
Capricious  Lovers."  The  latter  is  something  akin 
to  the  delicate  lady  in  the  "  Precieuses  Ridicules,"  — 
the  very  sight  of  a  gentleman  makes  her  grow  sick, 
so  indelicate  is  the  spectacle ;  and  she  refines  upon 
the  significancy  of  phrases,  till  she  resolves  common 
conversation  into  rank  offence  against  modesty. 

Caroline  not  only  ruled  her  husband  without  his 
being  aware  of  it,  but  could  laugh  at  him  heartily, 
without  hurting  his  feelings  by  allowing  him  to  be 
conscious  of  it.  Hereafter  mention  may  be  made  of 
the  sensitiveness  of  the  court  to  satire ;  but  before 
the  death  of  George  I.,  it  seems  to  have  been  enjoyed, 
at  least  by  Caroline,  Princess  of  Wales,  —  more  than 
it  was  subsequently  by  the  same  illustrious  lady,  when 
Queen  of  England.  Doctor  Arbuthnot,  at  the  period 
alluded  to,  had  occasion  to  write  to  Swift.  The  doc- 
tor had  been  publishing,  by  subscription,  his  "  Tables 
of  Ancient  Coins,"  and  was  gaining  very  few  modern 
specimens  by  his  work.  The  dean,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  then  reaping  a  harvest  of  profit  and  popu- 
larity by  his  "  Gulliver's  Travels,"  —  that  book  of 
which  the  puzzled  Bishop  of  Ferns  said,  on  coming 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  299 

to  the  last  page,  that,  all  things  considered,  he  did 
not  believe  a  word  of  it ! 

Arbuthnot,  writing  to  Swift  on  the  subject  of  the 
two  works,  says  (8th  Nov.,  1726)  that  his  book  had 
been  out  about  a  month,  but  that  he  had  not  yet  got 
his  subscribers'  names.  "  I  will  make  over,"  he  says, 
"  all  my  profits  to  you,  for  the  property  of  '  Gulliver's 
Travels/  which,  I  believe,  will  have  as  great  a  run  as 
John  Bunyan.  Gulliver  is  a  happy  man,  that,  at  his 
age,  can  write  such  a  book."  Arbuthnot  subse- 
quently relates,  that  when  he  last  saw  the  Princess 
of  Wales,  "she  was  reading  Gulliver,  and  was  just 
come  to  the  passage  of  the  hobbling  prince,  which 
she  laughed  at."  The  laugh  was  at  the  cost  of  her 
husband,  whom  Swift  represented  in  the  satire  as 
walking  with  one  high  and  low  heel,  in  allusion  to  the 
prince's  supposed  vacillation  between  the  Whigs  and 
Tories. 

The  princess,  however,  had  more  regard,  at  all 
times,  for  sages  than  she  had  for  satirists.  It  was  at 
the  request  of  Caroline  that  Newton  drew  up  an 
abstract  of  a  treatise  on  ancient  chronology,  first 
published  in  France,  and  subsequently  in  England. 
Her  regard  for  Halley  dates  from  an  earlier  period 
than  Newton's  death,  or  Caroline's  accession.  She 
had  in  1721  pressed  Halley  to  become  the  tutor  of 
her  favourite  son,  the  Duke  of  Cumberland ;  but  the 
great  perfecter  of  the  theory  of  the  moon's  motion 
was  then  too  busy  with  his  syzygies  to  be  troubled 
with  teaching  the  humanities  to  little  princes.  It  was 
for  the  same  reason  that  Halley  resigned  his  post  of 
secretary  to  the  Royal  Society. 

This  question  of  the  education  of  the  children  of 


300  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  Prince,  and  Princess  of  Wales  was  one  much  dis- 
cussed, and  not  without  bitterness,  by  the  disputants 
on  both  sides.  In  the  same  year  that  the  Princess 
of  Wales  desired  to  secure  Halley  as  the  instructor 
of  William  of  Cumberland  (1721),  George  I.  made  an 
earl  of  that  Thomas  Parker  who,  from  an  attorney's 
office,  had  steadily  risen  through  the  various  grades 
of  the  law,  had  been  entrusted  with  high  commissions, 
and  finally  became  lord  chancellor.  George  I.  on  his 
accession  made  him  Baron  of  Macclesfield,  and  in 
1721  raised  him  to  the  rank  of  earl.  He  paid  for 
the  honour,  by  supporting  the  king  against  the  Prince 
and  Princess  of  Wales.  The  latter  claimed  an  exclu- 
sive right  of  direction  in  the  education  of  their  chil- 
dren. Lord  Macclesfield  declared  that,  by  law,  they 
had  no  right  at  all  to  control  the  education  of  their 
offspring.  Neither  prince  nor  princess  ever  forgave 
him  for  this.  They  waited  for  the  hour  of  repaying 
it ;  and  the  time  soon  came.  In  two  or  three  years, 
to  Macclesfield  might  almost  have  been  applied  the 
words  of  Pope : 

"  If  parts  allure  thee,  think  how  Bacon  shined, 
The  wisest,  brightest,  meanest  of  mankind." 

The  first  "  Brunswick  chancellor  "  became  notorious 
for  his  malpractices  —  selling  places,  and  trafficking 
with  the  funds  of  the  suitors.  His  enemies  resolved 
to  impeach  him,  and  this  resolution  originated  at 
Leicester  House,  and  was  carried  out  with  such  ef- 
fect that  the  chancellor  was  condemned  to  pay  a  fine 
of  .£30,000.  George  I.,  knowing  that  the  son  whom 
he  hated  was  the  cause  of  so  grave,  but  just,  a  conse- 
quence, promised  to  repay  to  the  ex-chancellor  the 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  301 

amount  of  the  fine  which  Lord  Macclesfield  had  him- 
self paid,  a  few  days  after  the  sentence,  by  the  mort- 
gage of  a  valuable  estate.  The  king,  however,  was 
rather  slow  in  acquitting  himself  of  his  promise.  He 
forwarded  one  instalment  of  ;£i,ooo,  but  he  paid  no 
more,  death  supervening  and  preventing  the  further 
performance  of  a  promise  only  made  to  annoy  his  son 
and  his  son's  wife. 

In  one  respect  Lord  Macclesfield  and  the  Princess 
of  Wales  resembled  each  other,  —  in  entertaining  a 
curious  feeling  of  superstition.  It  will  be  seen,  here- 
after, how  certain  Caroline  felt  that  she  should  die  on 
a  Wednesday,  and  for  what  reasons.  So,  like  her,  but 
with  more  accuracy,  the  fallen  Macclesfield  pointed 
out  the  day  for  his  decease.  In  his  disgrace  he  had 
devoted  himself  to  science  and  religion.  He  was, 
however,  distracted  by  a  malady  which  was  aggra- 
vated by  grief,  if  not  remorse.  Doctor  Pearce,  his 
constant  friend,  called  on  him  one  day,  and  found  him 
very  ill.  Lord  Macclesfield  said :  "  My  mother 
died  of  the  same  disorder  on  the  eighth  day,  and 
so  shall  I."  On  the  eighth  day  his  prophecy 
was  fulfilled ;  and  the  Leicester  House  party  were 
fully  avenged. 

The  feelings  of  both  prince  and  princess  were  for 
ever  in  excess.  Thus  both  appeared  to  have  enter- 
tained a  strong  sentiment  of  aversion  against  their 
eldest  child,  Frederick.  Caroline  did  not  bring  him 
with  her  to  this  country  when  she  herself  first  came 
over  to  take  up  her  residence  here.  Frederick  was 
born  at  Hanover,  on  the  2Oth  January,  1707.  He 
was  early  instructed  in  the  English  language ;  but 
he  disliked  study  of  every  description,  and  made  but 


302  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

little  progress  in  this  particular  branch.  As  a  child, 
he  was  remarkable  for  his  spitefulness  and  cunning. 
He  was  yet  a  youth  when  he  drank  like  any  German 
baron  of  old,  played  as  deeply  as  he  drank,  and  en- 
tered heart  and  soul  into  other  vices,  which  not  only 
corrupted  both,  but  his  body  also.  His  tutor  was 
scandalised  by  his  conduct,  and  complained  of  it 
grievously.  Caroline  was,  at  that  time,  given  to 
find  excuses  for  conduct  with  which  she  did  not  care 
to  be  so  far  troubled  as  to  censure  it ;  and  she 
remarked,  that  the  escapades  complained  of  were 
mere  page's  tricks.  "  Would  to  Heaven,  they  were 
no  more!"  exclaimed  the  worthy  governor;  "but  in 
truth  they  are  tricks  of  grooms  and  scoundrels." 
The  prince  spared  his  friends  as  little  as  his  foes, 
and  his  heart  was  as  vicious  as  his  head  was 
weak. 

Caroline  had  little  affection  for  this  child,  whom 
she  would  have  willingly  defrauded  of  his  birthright. 
At  one  time  she  appears  to  have  been  inclined  to 
secure  the  electorate  of  Hanover  for  William,  and 
to  allow  Frederick  to  succeed  to  the  English  throne. 
At  another  time,  she  was  as  desirous,  it  is  believed, 
of  advancing  William  to  the  crown  of  England,  and 
making  over  the  electorate  to  Frederick.  How  far 
these  intrigues  were  carried  on  is  hardly  known,  but 
that  they  existed  is  matter  of  notoriety.  The  law 
presented  a  barrier  which  could  not,  however,  be 
broken  down ;  but,  nevertheless,  Lord  Chesterfield, 
in  his  character  of  the  princess,  intimated  that  she 
was  busy  with  this  project  throughout  her  life. 

Frederick  was  not  permitted  to  come  to  England 
during  any  period  of  the  time  that  his  parents  were 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  303 

Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales.  An  English  title  or 
two  may  be  said  to  have  been  flung  to  him  across  the 
water.  Thus,  in  1717,  he  was  created  Duke  of 
Gloucester,  and  the  Garter  was  sent  to  him  the 
following  year.  In  1726  he  became  Duke  of  Edin- 
burgh. He  never  occupied  a  place  in  the  hearts  of 
either  his  father  or  mother. 

It  is  but  fair  to  the  character  of  the  Princess  of 
Wales  to  say  that,  severe  as  was  the  feeling  enter- 
tained by  herself  against  Lord  Miicclesfield, — a  feel- 
ing shared  in  by  her  consort,  —  neither  of  them  ever 
after  entertained  any  ill  feeling  against  Philip  Yorke, 
subsequently  Lord  Chancellor  Hardwicke,  who  de- 
fended his  friend  Lord  Macclesfield,  with  great  fear- 
lessness, at  the  period  of  his  celebrated  trial.  Only 
once,  in  after-life,  did  George  II.  visit  Lord  Ha.rd- 
wicke  with  a  severe  rebuff.  The  learned  lord  was 
avaricious,  discouraging  to  those  who  sought  to  rise 
in  their  profession,  and  caring  only  for  the  advance- 
ment of  his  own  relations.  He  was  once  seeking  for 
a  place  for  a  distant  relation,  when  the  husband  of 
Caroline  exclaimed,  "  You  are  always  asking  favours, 
and  I  observe  that  it  is  invariably  in  behalf  of  some 
one  of  your  family  or  kinsmen."  We  shall  hereafter 
find  Caroline  making  allusions  to  "Judge  Gripus,"  as 
a  character  in  a  play,  but  it  was  a  name  given  to 
Lord  Hardwicke,  on  account  of  his  "meanness." 
This  feeling  was  shared  by  his  wife.  The  expen- 
sively embroidered  velvet  purse  in  which  the  great 
seal  is  carried  was  renewed  every  year  during  Lord 
Hardwicke's  time.  Each  year,  Lady  Hardwicke  or- 
dered that  the  velvet  should  be  of  the  length  of  one 
of  her  state  rooms  at  Wimpole.  In  course  of  time, 


304  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  prudent  lady  obtained  enough  to  tapestry  the 
room  with  the  legal  velvet,  and  to  make  curtains 
and  hangings  for  a  state  bed,  which  stood  in  the 
apartment.  Well  might  Pope  have  said  of  these  : 

"  Is  yellow  dirt  the  passion  of  thy  life  ? 
Look  but  on  Gripus  and  on  Gripus'  wife." 

But  this  is  again  anticipating  the  events  of  history. 
Let  us  go  back  to  1721,  when  Caroline  and  her  hus- 
band exercised  a  courage  which  caused  great  admira- 
tion in  the  saloons  of  Leicester  House,  and  a  doubtful 
sort  of  applause  throughout  the  country.  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montagu  had  just  reported  the  successful 
results  of  inoculation  for  the  smallpox,  which  she  had 
witnessed  at  Constantinople.  Doctor  Mead  was  or- 
dered by  the  prince  to  inoculate  six  criminals  who 
had  been  condemned  to  death,  but  whose  lives  were 
spared  for  this  experiment.  It  succeeded  admirably, 
and  the  patients  were  more  satisfied  by  the  result  of 
the  experiment  than  any  one  besides.  In  the  year 
following,  Caroline  allowed  Doctor  Mead  to  inoculate 
her  two  daughters,  and  the  doctor  ultimately  became 
physician  in  ordinary  to  her  husband. 

The  medical  appointments  made  by  Caroline  and 
her  husband  certainly  had  a  political  motive.  Thus, 
the  Princess  of  Wales  persuaded  her  husband  to  name 
Friend  his  physician  in  ordinary,  just  after  the  latter 
had  been  liberated  from  the  Tower,  where  he  had 
suffered  incarceration  for  daring  to  defend  Atterbury 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  when  the  bishop  was 
accused  of  being  guilty  of  treason.  Caroline  always 
had  a  high  esteem  for  Friend,  independently  of  his 
political  opinions,  and  one  of  her  first  acts,  on  ceasing 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  305 

ft 

to  be  Princess  of  Wales,  was  to  make  Friend  physician 
to  the  queen. 

It  is  said  by  Swift  that  the  Princess  of  Wales  sent 
for  him  to  Leicester  Fields,  no  less  than  nine  times, 
before  he  would  obey  the  reiterated  summons.  When 
he  did  appear  before  Caroline,  he  roughly  remarked 
that  he  understood  she  liked  to  see  odd  persons ; 
that  she  had  lately  inspected  a  wild  boy  from  Ger- 
many, and  that  now  she  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing 
a  wild  parson  from  Ireland.  Swift  declares  that  the 
court  in  Leicester  Fields  was  very  anxious  to  settle 
him  in  England,  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the 
anxiety  was  very  sincere.  Swift's  declaration  that 
he  had  no  anxiety  to  be  patronised  by  the  Princess 
of  Wales  was  probably  as  little  sincere.  The  patron- 
age sometimes  exercised  there  was  mercilessly  sneered 
at  by  Swift.  Thus  Caroline  had  expressed  a  desire 
to  do  honour  to  Gay,  but  when  the  post  offered  was 
only  that  of  a  gentleman  usher  to  the  little  Princess 
Caroline,  Swift  was  bitterly  satirical  on  the  Princess 
of  Wales  supposing  that  the  poet  Gay  would  be  will- 
ing to  act  as  a  sort  of  male  nurse  to  a  little  girl  of 
two  years  of  age. 

The  Prince  of  Wales  was  occasionally  as  cavalierly 
treated  by  the  ladies  as  the  princess  by  the  men. 
One  of  the  maids  of  honour  of  Caroline,  the  well- 
known  Miss  Bellenden,  would  boldly  stand  before 
him  with  her  arms  folded,  and  when  asked  why  she 
did  so,  would  toss  her  pretty  head,  and  laughingly 
exclaim  that  she  did  so,  not  because  she  was  cold, 
but  that  she  chose  to  stand  with  her  arms  folded. 
When  her  own  niece  became  maid  of  honour  to 
Queen  Caroline,  and  audacious  Miss  Bellenden  was 


306  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

a  grave  married  lady,  she  instructively  warned  her 
young  relative  not  to  be  so  imprudent  a  maid  of 
honour  as  her  aunt  had  been  before  her. 

But  strange  things  were  done  by  princes  and 
princesses  in  those  days,  as  well  as  by  those  who 
waited  on  them.  For  instance,  in  1725,  it  is  re- 
ported by  Miss  Dyves,  maid  of  honour  to  the  Prin- 
cess Amelia,  daughter  of  the  Princess  of  Wales,  that 
"the  prince,  and  everybody  but  myself,  went  last 
Friday  to  Bartholomew  Fair.  It  was  a  fine  day,  so 
he  went  by  water ;  and  I,  being  afraid,  did  not  go ; 
after  the  fair,  they  supped  at  the  King's  Arms,  and 
came  home  about  four  o'clock  in  the  morning."  An 
heir  apparent,  and  part  of  his  family  and  consort, 
going  by  water  from  Richmond  to  "  Bartlemy  Fair," 
supping  at  a  tavern,  staying  out  all  night,  and  return- 
ing home  not  long  before  honest  men  breakfasted, 
was  not  calculated  to  make  royalty  respectable. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE    FIRST    YEARS    OF    A    REIGN 

Death  of  George  the  First  —  Adroitness  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole  — 
The  First  Royal  Reception  —  Unceremonious  Treatment  of  the 
Late  King's  Will  —  The  Coronation  —  Magnificent  Dress  of 
Queen  Caroline  —  Mrs.  Oldfield,  in  Queen  Catherine,  in  "  Henry 
VIII."  —  The  King's  Revenue,  and  the  Queen's  Jointure,  the 
Result  of  Walpole's  Exertions  —  His  Success  —  Management  of 
the  King  by  Queen  Caroline  —  Unseemly  Dialogue  between 
Walpole  and  Lord  Townshend  —  Gay's  "  Beggar's  Opera,"  and 
Satire  on  Walpole  —  Origin  of  the  Opera  —  Its  Great  Success 
—  Gay's  Cause  Espoused  by  the  Duchess  of  Queensberry  —  Her 
Smart  Reply  to  a  Royal  Message —  The  Tragedy  of  "  Frederick, 
Duke  of  Brunswick  "  —  The  Queen  Appointed  Regent  —  Prince 
Frederick  Becomes  Chief  of  the  Opposition  —  His  Silly  Reflec- 
tions on  the  King  —  Agitation  about  the  Repeal  of  the  Corpora- 
tion and  Test  Acts  —  The  Queen's  Ineffectual  Efforts  to  Gain 
over  Bishop  Hoadly  —  Sir  Robert  Extricates  Himself  —  The 
Church  Made  the  Scapegoat  —  Queen  Caroline  Earnest  About 
Trifles  —  Etiquette  of  the  Toilet  —  Fracas  between  Mr.  How- 
ard and  the  Queen  —  Modest  Request  of  Mrs.  Howard —  Lord 
Chesterfield's  Description  of  Her. 

SIR  ROBERT  WALPOLE  was  sojourning  at  Chelsea, 
and  thinking  of  nothing  less  than  of  the  demise  of  a 
king,  when  news  was  brought  him,  by  a  messenger 
from  Lord  Townshend,  at  three  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon of  June  14,  1727,  that  his  late  Most  Sacred 
Majesty  was  then  lying  dead  in  the  Westphalian 
palace  of  his  Serene  Highness  the  Bishop  of  Osna- 
burgh.  Sir  Robert  immediately  hurried  to  Richmond, 

30? 


308  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

in  order  to  be  the  first  to  do  homage  to  the  new 
sovereigns,  George  and  Caroline.  George  accepted 
the  homage  with  much  complacency,  and  on  being 
asked  by  Sir  Robert  as  to  the  person  whom  the 
king  would  select  to  draw  up  the  usual  address  to 
the  privy  council,  George  II.  mentioned  the  Speaker 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  Sir  Spenser  Compton. 

This  was  a  civil  way  of  telling  Sir  Robert  that  his 
services  as  prime  minister  were  no  longer  required. 
He  was  not  pleased  at  being  supplanted,  but  neither 
was  he  wrathfully  little-minded  against  his  successor, 
—  a  successor  so  incompetent  for  his  task  that  he 
was  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  Sir  Robert  to  assist 
him  in  drawing  up  the  address  above  alluded  to. 
Sir  Robert  rendered  the  assistance  with  much  hearti- 
ness, but  was  not  the  less  determined,  if  possible,  to 
retain  his  office,  in  spite  of  the  personal  dislike  of 
the  king,  and  of  that  of  the  queen,  whom  he  had 
offended,  when  she  was  Princess  of  Wales,  by  speak- 
ing of  her  as  "  that  fat  beast,  the  prince's  wife."  Sir 
Robert  could  easily  make  poor  Sir  Spenser  commu- 
nicative with  regard  to  his  future  intentions.  The 
latter  was  a  stiff,  gossiping,  soft-hearted  creature, 
and  might  very  well  have  taken  for  his  motto  the 
words  of  Parmeno  in  the  play  of  Terence,  "  Plenus 
rimarum  sum"  He  intimated  that  on  first  meeting 
Parliament  he  should  propose  an  allowance  of  £60- 
ooo  per  annum  to  be  made  to  the  queen.  "I  will 
make  it  ,£40,000  more,"  said  Sir  Robert,  subse- 
quently, through  a  second  party,  to  Queen  Caroline, 
"if  my  office  of, minister  be  secured  to  me."  Caro- 
line was  delighted  at  the  idea,  intimated  that  Sir 
Robert  might  be  sure  "the  fat  beast"  had  friendly 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  309 

feelings  toward  him,  and  then  hastening  to  the  king, 
over  whose  weaker  intellect  her  more  masculine  mind 
held  rule,  explained  to  her  royal  husband  that,  as 
Compton  considered  Walpole  the  fittest  man  to  be, 
what  he  had  so  long  been  with  efficiency,  —  prime 
minister,  —  it  would  be  a  foolish  act  to  nominate  Comp- 
ton himself  to  the  office.  The  king  acquiesced,  Sir 
Spenser  was  made  president  of  the  council,  and  Sir 
Robert  not  only  persuaded  Parliament,  without  diffi- 
culty, to  settle  one  hundred  thousand  a  year  on  the 
queen,  but  he  also  persuaded  the  august  trustees  of 
the  people's  money  to  add  the  entire  revenue  of  the 
civil  list,  about  .£130,000  a  year,  to  the  annual  sum 
of  ,£700,000,  which  had  been  settled  as  the  proper 
revenue  for  a  king.  Sir  Robert  had  thus  the  wit  to 
bribe  king  and  queen,  out  of  the  funds  of  the  people, 
and  we  cannot  be  surprised  that  their  Majesties 
looked  upon  him  and  his  as  true  allies.  Indeed  Caro- 
line did  not  wait  for  the  success  of  the  measure  in 
order  to  show  her  confidence  in  Walpole.  Their 
Majesties  had  removed  from  Richmond  to  their  tem- 
porary palace  in  Leicester  Fields,  on  the  very  even- 
ing of  their  receiving  notice  of  their  accession  to 
the  crown  ;  and  the  next  day,  all  the  nobility  and 
gentry  in  town  crowded  to  kiss  their  hands.  "  My 
mother,"  says  Horace  Walpole,  "among  the  rest, 
who,  Sir  Spenser  Compton's  designation  and  not  his 
evaporation  being  known,  could  not  make  her  way 
between  the  scornful  backs  and  elbows  of  her  late 
devotees,  nor  could  approach  nearer  to  the  queen 
than  the  third  or  fourth  row ;  but  no  sooner  was  she 
descried  by  her  Majesty  than  the  queen  said  aloud  : 
'  There  I  am  sure  I  see  a  friend  ! '  The  torrent  divided 


310  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

and  shrank  to  either  side,  '  and  as  I  came  away,'  said 
my  mother,  '  I  might  have  walked  over  their  heads, 
had  I  pleased.' " 

When  Louis  XIV.,  perhaps  not  without  some  sur- 
prise, found  that  his  "  grandeur  "  did  not  confer  upon 
him  the  benefit  hinted  at  in  the  sermon  of  a  court 
chaplain,  to  the  effect  that  "  all  men  —  that  is, 
almost  all  men  —  must  die  !  "  he  at  least  comforted 
himself  with  one  consideration,  namely,  that  he  had 
placed  his  illegitimate  children  in  the  line  of  succes- 
sion to  the  throne,  and  that  of  course  this,  his  will, 
made  when  living,  would  be  respected  after  he  should 
be  dead.  But  the  ass  in  the  fable  was  not  more 
scornful  of  the  sick  lion  than  the  French  people  were 
of  the  dead  king.  No  sooner  was  he  fairly  entombed 
in  the  vaults  of  St.  Denis,  than  his  will  was  quashed 
with  as  little  ceremony  as  if  it  had  been  a  fraudulent 
document,  —  as  indeed  it  was,  the  fraud  of  a  king 
who  thought  he  could  overturn  law  as  he  lay  in  the 
grave.  Generally  speaking,  the  "wills"  of  despots 
are  antagonistic  to  despotism ;  but  the  last  testa- 
ment of  Louis  would  have  made  of  the  French  people 
the  slaves  of  a  despot  dead  and  disembowelled. 

George  I.  does  not  appear  to  have  remembered  the 
instruction  which  he  might  have  drawn  from  the  cir- 
cumstance of  the  quashing  of  the  will  of  so  irrespon- 
sible a  monarch  as  Louis  XIV.  He  calmly  drew  up 
a  will  which  he  coolly  thought  his  successor  would 
respect.  Perhaps  he  remembered  that  his  son  be- 
lieved in  ghosts  and  vampires,  and  would  fulfil  a  dead 
man's  will  out  of  mere  terror  of  a  dead  man's  visita- 
tion. But  George  Augustus  had  no  such  fear,  nor 
any  such  respect  as  that  noticed  above. 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  311 

At  the  first  council  held  by  George  II.,  Doctor 
Wake,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  in  whose  hands 
George  I.  had  deposited  his  last  will  and  testament, 
produced  that  precious  instrument,  placed  it  before 
the  king,  and  composed  himself  to  hear  the  instruc- 
tions of  the  deceased  parent  recited  by  his  heir. 
The  new  king,  however,  put  the  paper  in  his  pocket, 
walked  out  of  the  room,  never  uttered  a  word  more 
upon  the  subject,  and  general  rumour  subsequently 
proclaimed  that  the  royal  will  had  been  dropped  into 
the  fire  by  the  testator's  son. 

That  testator,  however,  had  been  a  destroyer  of 
wills  himself.  He  had  burnt  that  of  the  poor  old 
Duke  of  Zell,  and  he  had  treated  in  like  manner  the 
last  will  of  Sophia  Dorothea.  The  Matter  document 
favoured  both  his  children  more  than  he  approved, 
and  the  king,  who  could  do  no  wrong,  committed  a 
felonious  act,  which  for  a  common  criminal  would 
have  purchased  a  halter.  Being  given  to  this  sort 
of  iniquity  himself,  he  naturally  thought  ill  of  the 
heir  whom  he  looked  upon  as  bound  to  respect  the 
will  of  his  father.  To  bind  him  the  more  securely 
to  such  an  observance,  he  left  two  duplicates  of  his 
will ;  one  of  which  was  deposited  with  the  Duke  of 
Wolfenbiittel,  the  other  with  another  German  prince, 
whose  name  has  not  been  revealed,  and  both  were 
given  up  by  the  depositaries  for  fee  and  reward 
duly  paid  for  the  service.  The  copies  were  des- 
troyed in  the  same  way  as  the  original.  What 
instruction  was  set  down  in  this  document  has  never 
been  ascertained.  Walpole  speaks  of  a  reported  leg- 
acy of  ^40,000  to  the  king's  surviving  mistress,  the 
Duchess  of  Kendal,  and  of  a  subsequent  compromise 


312  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

made  with  the  husband  of  the  duchess's  "  niece  "  and 
heiress,  Lady  Walsingham,  —  a  compromise  which 
followed  upon  a  threatened  action  at  law.  Some- 
thing similar  is  said  to  have  taken  place  with  the 
King  of  Prussia,  to  whose  wife,  the  daughter  of 
George  I.,  the  latter  monarch  was  reported  to  have 
bequeathed  a  considerable  legacy. 

However  this  may  be,  the  surprise  of  the  council 
and  the  consternation  of  the  primate  were  excessive. 
The  latter  dignitary  was  the  last  man,  however,  who 
could  with  propriety  have  blamed  a  fellow  man  for 
acting  contrary  to  what  was  expected  of  him.  He 
himself  had  been  the  warmest  advocate  of  religious 
toleration  until  he  reached  the  primacy,  and  had  an 
opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  a  little  harshness 
toward  dissenters.  The  latter  were  as  much  aston- 
ished at  their  ex-advocate  as  the  latter  was  astounded 
by  the  act  of  the  king. 

We  will  not  further  allude  to  the  coronation  of 
George  and  Caroline  than  by  saying  that,  on  the 
occasion  in  question,  these  sovereigns  displayed  a 
gorgeousness  of  taste  of  a  somewhat  barbarous  qual- 
ity. The  coronation  was  the  most  splendid  which 
had  been  seen  for  years.  George,  despite  his  low 
stature  and  fair  hair,  which  heightened  the  weakness 
of  his  expression  at  this  period,  was  said  to  be,  on 
this  occasion,  "every  inch  a  king."  He  enjoyed 
the  splendour  of  the  scene  and  of  himself,  and 
thought  it  cheaply  purchased  at  the  cost  of  much 
fatigue. 

Caroline  was  not  inferior  to  her  lord.  It  is  true, 
that  of  crown  jewels  she  had  none  save  a  pearl  neck- 
lace, the  solitary  spoil  left  of  all  the  gems,  "  rich  and 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  313 

rare,"  which  had  belonged  to  Queen  Anne,  and  which 
had,  for  the  most  part,  been  distributed  by  the  late 
king  among  his  favourites  of  every  degree.  Had  his 
daughter,  the  Queen  of  Prussia,  been  among  those 
for  whom  he  affected  some  attachment,  it  is  possible 
that  a  few  relics  of  the  crown,  or,  rather,  national 
property,  might  yet  be  found  among  the  treasures  of 
Berlin.  However  this  may  be,  Caroline  wore,  on  the 
occasion  of  her  crowning,  not  only  the  pearl  necklace 
of  Queen  Anne,  but  "  she  had  on  her  head  and  shoul- 
ders all  the  pearls  and  necklaces  which  she  could 
borrow  from  the  ladies  of  quality  at  one  end  of  the 
town,  and  on  her  petticoat  all  the  diamonds  she  could 
hire  of  the  Jews  and  jewellers  at  the  other  ;  so,"  adds 
Lord  Hervey,  from  whom  this  detail  is  taken,  "the 
appearance  and  the  truth  of  her  finery  was  a  mixture 
of  magnificence  and  meanness,  not  unlike  the  tclat 
of  royalty  in  many  other  particulars,  when  it  comes 
to  be  nicely  examined,  and  its  sources  traced  to  what 
money  hires  and  flattery  lends." 

The  queen  dressed  for  the  grand  ceremony  in  a  pri- 
vate room  at  Westminster.  Early  in  the  morning  she 
put  on  "an  undress"  at  St.  James's,  of  which  we 
are  interestingly  told  that  "everything  was  new." 
She  was  carried  across  St.  James's  Park  privately  in 
a  chair,  bearing  no  distinctive  mark  upon  it,  and  pre- 
ceded, at  a  short  distance,  by  the  lord  chancellor  and 
Mrs.  Howard,  both  of  whom  were  in  "hack  sedans." 
She  was  dressed  by  that  lady.  Mrs.  Herbert,  an- 
other bedchamber-woman,  would  fain  have  shared  in 
the  honour,  but  as  she  was  herself  in  full  dress  for 
the  ceremony,  she  was  pronounced  incapable  of  attir- 
ing her  who  was  to  be  the  heroine  of  it.  At  the  con- 


3 14  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

elusion  of  the  august  affair,  the  queen  unrobed  in  an 
adjacent  apartment,  and,  as  in  the  morning,  was 
smuggled  back  to  St.  James's  in  a  private  chair. 

Magnificent  as  Caroline  was  in  borrowed  finery  at 
her  coronation,  she  was  excelled,  in  point  of  show, 
by  Mrs.  Oldfield,  on  the  stage  at  Drury  Lane.  The 
theatre  was  closed  on  the  night  of  the  real  event. 
The  government  had  no  idea  then  of  dividing  a 
multitude,  but  the  management  expended  a  thousand 
pounds  in  getting  up  the  pageant  of  the  crowning  of 
Anne  Boleyn  at  the  close  of  "  Henry  VIII."  In  this 
piece  Booth  made  Henry  the  principal  character,  and 
Gibber's  Wolsey  sank  to  a  second-rate  part.  The 
pageant,  however,  was  so  attractive,  that  it  was  often 
played,  detached  from  the  piece,  at  the  conclusion  of 
a  comedy  or  any  other  play.  Caroline  went  more 
than  once  with  her  royal  consort  to  witness  this 
representation,  an  honour  which  was  refused  to  the 
more  vulgar  show,  which  had  but  indifferent  success, 
at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  Were  there  "cause  and 
consequence"  in  these  facts,  and  in  the  subsequent 
refusal  of  Gibber  to  accept  the  "  Beggar's  Opera,"  and 
the  eager  reception  by  Rich  of  the  same  piece,  which 
was  afterward  represented  to  the  great  annoyance  of 
court  and  cabinet,  allegedly  satirised  therein  ? 

The  king's  revenue,  as  settled  upon  him  by  the 
Whig  Parliament,  was  larger  than  any  of  our  kings 
had  before  enjoyed.  Caroline's  jointure,  ;£  100,000 
a  year,  with  Somerset  House  and  Richmond  Lodge, 
was  double  that  which  had  been  granted  previously 
to  any  queen.  This  success  had  been  so  notoriously 
the  result  of  Walpole's  exertions,  that  the  husband 
of  Caroline,  who  dealt  in  very  strong  terms,  began  to 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  315 

look  complacently  on  the  "  rogue  and  rascal,"  thought 
his  brother  Horace  bearable,  in  spite  of  his  being,  as 
George  used  to  call  him,  "  scoundrel,"  "  fool,"  and 
"dirty  buffoon,"  and  he  even  felt  less  averse  than 
usual  to  the  two  secretaries  of  state  of  Walpole's  ad- 
ministration, the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  the  "  impertinent 
fool,"  whom  he  had  threatened  at  the  christening  of 
William,  Duke  of  Cumberland,  and  Lord  Townshend, 
whom  he  was  wont  to  designate  as  a  "  choleric  block- 
head." The  issue  of  the  affair  was  that,  of  Walpole's 
cabinet,  no  one  went  out  but  the  minister's  son-in- 
law,  Lord  Mai  pas,  roughly  ejected  from  the  master- 
ship of  the  robes,  and  "  Stinking  Yonge,"  as  the  king 
used  elegantly  to  designate  Sir  William,  who  was 
turned  out  of  the  commission  of  treasury,  and  whose 
sole  little  failings  were,  that  he  was  "  pitiful,  corrupt, 
contemptible,  and  a  great  liar,"  though,  as  Lord  Her- 
vey  says,  "  rather  a  mean  than  a  vicious  one,"  which 
<Joes  not  seem  to  me  to  mend  the  matter,  and  which 
is  a  distinction  without  a  difference.  After  all,  Sir 
William  only  dived  to  come  up  fresh  again.  And 
Lord  Malpas  performed  the  same  feat. 

Henceforth  it  was  understood  by  every  lady,  says 
Lord  Hervey,  "  that  Sir  Robert  was  the  queen's  min- 
ister ;  that  whoever  he  favoured  she  distinguished, 
and  whoever  she  distinguished  the  king  employed." 
The  queen  ruled  without  seeming  to  rule.  She  was 
mistress  by  power  of  suggestion.  A  word  from  her 
in  public,  addressed  to  the  king,  generally  earned  for 
her  a  rebuke.  Her  consort  so  pertinaciously  de- 
clared that  he  was  independent,  and  that  she  never 
meddled  with  public  business  of  any  kind,  that  every 
one,  even  the  early  dupes  of  the  assertion,  ceased  at 


316  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

last  to  put  any  faith  in  it.  Caroline  "  not  only  med- 
dled with  business,  but  directed  everything  which 
came  under  that  name,  either  at  home  or  abroad." 
It  is  too  much,  perhaps,  to  say  that  her  power  was 
unrivalled  and  ^unbounded,  but  it  was,  doubtless, 
great,  and  purchased  at  great  cost.  That  she 
could  induce  her  husband  to  employ  a  man  whom 
he  had  not  yet  learned  to  like,  was  in  itself  no  small 
proof  of  her  power,  considering  the  peculiarly  obsti- 
nate disposition  of  the  monarch. 

Her  recommendation  of  Walpole  was  not  based, 
it  is  believed,  upon  any  very  exalted  motives.  Wal- 
pole himself,  in  his  official  connections  with  the 
sovereign,  was  certainly  likely  to  take  every  advan- 
tage of  the  opportunity  to  create  favourable  convic- 
tions of  his  ability.  Caroline,  in  praising  his  ability 
to  the  king,  suggested  that  Sir  Robert  was  rich 
enough  to  be  honest,  and  had  so  little  private  busi- 
ness of  his  own,  that  he  had  all  the  more  leisure 
to  devote  to  that  of  the  king.  "  New  leeches  would 
be  not  the  less  hungry ; "  and  with  this  very  indif- 
ferent sort  of  testimony  to  her  favourite's  worth 
Caroline  secured  a  servant  for  the  king  and  a  minister 
for  herself. 

The  tact  of  the  queen  was  so  admirable,  that  the 
husband,  who  followed  her  counsel  in  all  things, 
never  even  himself  suspected  but  that  he  was  leading 
her.  This  was  the  very  triumph  of  the  queen's  art, 
and  the  crowning  proof  of  the  simplicity  and  silliness 
of  the  king.  It  is  said  that  he  sneered  at  Charles  I. 
for  being  governed  by  his  wife ;  at  Charles  II.  for 
being  governed  by  his  mistresses ;  at  James  led  by 
priests ;  at  William  duped  by  men ;  at  Queen  Anne 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  317 

deceived  by  her  favourites ;  and  at  his  father,  who 
allowed  himself  to  be  ruled  by  any  one  who  could 
approach  him.  And  he  finished  his  catalogue  of 
scorn  by  proudly  asking,  "  Who  governs  now  ? " 
The  courtiers  probably  smiled  behind  their  jaunty 
hats.  The  wits,  and  some  of  them  were  courtiers, 
too,  answered  the  query  more  roughly,  and  they 
remarked,  in  rugged  rhyme  and  bad  grammar : 

"  You  may  strut,  dapper  George,  but  'twill  all  be  in  vain ; 
We  know  'tis  Queen  Caroline,  not  you  that  reign  — 
You  govern  no  more  than  Don  Philip  of  Spain. 
Then  if  you  would  have  us  fall  down  and  adore  you, 
Lock  up  your  fat  spouse,  as  your  dad  did  before  you." 

The  two  were  otherwise  described  by  other  poetas- 
ters, as  — 

"  So  strutting  a  king  and  so  prating  a  queen." 

It  is  a  fact,  at  which  we  need  not  be  surprised, 
that  the  most  cutting  satires  against  the  king,  as  led 
by  his  wife,  were  from  the  pens  of  female  writers,  — 
or  said  to  be  so.  And  this  is  likely  enough  ;  for  in 
no  quarter  is  there  so  much  contempt  for  a  man  who 
leans  upon,  rather  than  supports,  his  wife.  The 
court  certainly  offered  good  opportunity  for  the  sati- 
rists to  make  merry  with.  It  is  said  of  the  court  of 
Anne  of  Brittany,  the  wife  of  two  Kings  of  France, 
Charles  VIII.  and  Louis  XII.,  that  it  was  so  re- 
nowned for  the  perfection  of  its  morality  and  correct- 
ness of  conduct,  that  to  gain  a  bride  from  amongst 
the  young  ladies  who  composed  the  suite  of  the  queen 
was  the  object  of  ambition  with  all  the  nobles  of  the 


318  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

time,  and  to  be  permitted  to  place  their  daughters 
under  her  eye  was  the  most  anxious  wish  of  all 
the  mothers  who  desired  to  see  them  respected  and 
admired.  The  court  of  Caroline,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, was  far  beneath  the  high  standard  of  that  of 
the  lady  who  brought  the  duchy  of  Brittany  with  her 
as  a  dowry  to  France.  There  was  not  much  female 
delicacy  in  it,  and  still  less  manly  dignity,  —  even  in 
the  presence  of  the  queen  herself.  Thus  we  hear, 
for  instance,  of  Caroline,  one  evening,  at  Windsor, 
asking  Sir  Robert  Walpole  and  Lord  Townshend 
where  they  had  dined  that  day  ?  My  lord  replied 
that  he  had  dined  with  Lord  and  Lady  Trevor,  an 
aged  couple,  and  the  lady  remarkable  for  her  more 
than  ordinary  plainness.  Whereupon  Sir  Robert, 
with  considerable  latitude  of  expression,  intimated, 
jokingly,  that  his  friend  was  paying  political  court  to 
the  lord,  in  order  to  veil  a  court  of  another  kind 
addressed  to  the  lady.  Lord  Townshend,  not  under- 
standing raillery  on  such  a  topic,  grew  angry,  and  in 
defending  himself  against  the  charge  of  seducing 
old  Lady  Trevor,  was  not  content  with  employing 
phrases  of  honest  indignation  alone,  but  used  illustra- 
tions that  no  "  lord  "  would  ever  think  of  using  before 
a  lady.  Caroline  grew  uneasy,  not  at  the  growing 
indelicacy  of  phrase,  but  at  the  angry  feelings  of  the 
Peachum  and  Lockit  of  the  court :  and  "  to  prevent 
Lord  Townshend's  replying,  or  the  thing  being 
pushed  any  further,  only  laughed,  and  began  immedi- 
ately to  talk  on  some  other  subject."  ' 

The  mention  of  the  heroes  in  Gay's  opera  serves 
to  remind  me  that,   in   1729,  the  influence  of  the 

1  Lord  Hervey's   Memoirs,  etc.,  of  the  Court  of  Queen  Caroline. 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  319 

queen  was  again  exerted  to  lead  the  king  to  do  what 
he  had  not  himself  dreamed  of  doing. 

Sir  Robert  Walpole  must  have  been  more  "thin- 
skinned  "  than  he  is  usually  believed  to  have  been,  if 
he  could  really  have  felt  wounded,  as  it  would  appear 
was  the  case,  by  the  alleged  satire  of  the  "  Beggar's 
Opera."  The  public  would  seem  to  have  been  the 
authors  of  such  satire  rather  than  Gay,  for  they 
made  application  of  many  passages,  to  which  the 
writer  of  them  probably  attached  no  personal 
meaning. 

The  origin  of  the  piece  was  certainly  not  political. 
It  was  a  mere  Newgate  pastoral  put  into  an  operatic 
form,  and  intended  to  ridicule,  what  it  succeeded 
in  overthrowing  for  a  season,  the  newly  introduced 
Italian  opera.  The  piece  had  been  refused  by  Cib- 
ber,  and  was  accepted  by  Rich,  who  brought  it  out 
at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  on  the  29th  of  January,  1728, 
with  such  success,  that  it  was  said  of  it,  —  that  it 
made  Gay  rich,  and  Rich  gay.  Walker  was  his 
Macheath,  and  Miss  Fenton,  afterward  Duchess  of 
Bolton,  the  Polly,  —  a  character  in  which  she  was 
not  approached  by  either  of  her  three  immediate  suc- 
cessors, Miss  Warren,  Miss  Cantrell,  or  sweet  Kitty 
Clive.  Some  of  the  passages,  seized  upon  as  satires 
on  Walpole,  Townshend,  and  Walpole's  daughter, 
"  Molly  Skerrett,"  seem  as  harmless  of  satire  as 
Spiller  was,  who  played  Mat  o'  the  Mint,  and  who 
shortly  after  died  of  apoplexy,  while  acting  in  the 
"  Rape  of  Proserpine  ; "  a  catastrophe  which  might 
be  as  reasonably  called  a  satire  upon  the  apoplectic 
destiny  of  George  I.,  as  that  all  the  passages  of  the 
opera  were  originally  intended  as  caricatures  of  the 


320  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

administration.  Johnson  says  of  the  piece  that  it 
was  plainly  written  only  to  divert,  —  without  any 
moral  purpose,  and  therefore  not  likely  to  do  good. 
This  is  the  truth,  no  doubt ;  and  if  Gay  put  in  a  few 
strong  passages  just  previous  to  representation,  it  was 
the  public  application  which  gave  them  double  force. 
Perhaps  the  application  would  have  been  stronger  if 
Quin  had  originally  played,  as  was  intended,  the  part 
of  Macheath.  To  step  from  Macbeth  to  the  high- 
wayman might  have  had  a  political  signification  given 
to  it ;  and,  indeed,  Quin  did  play  and  sing  the  captain 
one  night  for  his  benefit,  —  just  as  another  great 
tragedian,  Young,  did,  within  our  own  recollection. 
However,  never  had  piece  such  success.  It  was 
played  at  every  theatre  in  the  kingdom,  and  every 
audience  was  as  keenly  alive  for  passages  which 
could  be  applied  against  the  court  and  government, 
as  they  were  for  mere  ridicule  against  the  Italian 
opera. 

Caroline  herself  was  probably  not  opposed  to  the 
morale  of  the  piece.  Her  own  chair-men  were  sus- 
pected of  being  in  league  with  highwaymen,  and 
probably  were  ;  but  on  their  being  arrested,  and  dis- 
missed from  her  service  by  the  master  of  her  house- 
hold, who  suspected  their  guilt,  she  was  indignant  at 
the  liberty  taken,  and  insisted  on  their  being  re- 
stored. She  had  no  objection  to  be  safely  carried  by 
suspected  confederates  of  highwaymen. 

The  poverty  of  "  Polly  "  could  not  render  it  exempt 
from  being  made  the  scapegoat  for  the  "  Beggar's 
Opera,"  in  which  Walpole,  from  whom  Gay  could  not 
obtain  a  place,  was  said  to  be  "shown  up,"  night 
after  night,  as  a  thief,  and  the  friend  of  thieves.  The 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  321 

"  Beggar's  Opera "  had  a  run  before  its  satire  was 
felt  by  him  against  whom  it  was  chiefly  directed. 
"Polly"  is  very  stupid,  and  not  satirical,  but  it  was  a 
favourite  with  the  author.  The  latter,  therefore,  was 
especially  annoyed  at  receiving  an  injunction  from 
the  lord  chamberlain's  office,  obtained  at  the  request 
of  Sir  Robert,  whereby  the  representation  of  "  Polly  " 
was  forbidden  in  every  theatre.  The  poet  determined 
to  shame  his  enemies  by  printing  the  piece  with  a 
smart  political  supplement  annexed. 

Gay  was  the  "  spoiled  child "  of  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  Queensberry.  They  espoused  his  cause, 
and  the  duchess  was  especially  active,  urgent,  and 
successful  in  procuring  subscriptions,  —  compelling 
them,  by  gentle  violence,  even  from  the  most  reluc- 
tant. This  zeal  for  the  vexed  poet  went  so  far,  that 
the  duchess  solicited  subscriptions  even  in  the  queen's 
apartment,  and  in  the  royal  drawing-room.  There 
was  something  pleasant  in  making  even  the  courtiers 
subscribe  toward  the  circulating  of  a  piece  which 
royalty,  through  its  official,  had  prohibited  from 
being  acted.  The  zealous  duchess  "was  thus  busy 
with  three  or  four  gentlemen,  in  one  corner  of  the 
room,  when  the  king  came  upon  them,  and  inquired 
the  nature  of  her  business.  "  It  is  a  matter  of 
humanity  and  charity,"  said  her  Grace,  "  and  I  do  not 
despair  but  that  your  Majesty  will  contribute  to  it." 
The  monarch  disappointed  Gay's  patroness  in  this 
respect,  but  he  exhibited  no  symptom  whatever  of 
displeasure,  and  left  her  to  her  levying  occupation. 
Subsequently,  however,  in  the  queen's  apartment,  the 
subject  was  talked  over  between  the  royal  pair,  and 
not  till  then  did  George  perceive  that  the  conduct  of 


322  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  duchess  was  so  impertinent  that  it  was  necessary 
to  forbid  her  appearing  again,  at  least  for  the  present, 
at  court. 

The  king's  vice-chamberlain,  Mr.  Stanhope,  was 
despatched  with  a  verbal  message  to  this  effect. 
The  manner  and  the  matter  equally  enraged  Gay's 
patroness,  and  she  delivered  a  note  of  acknowledg- 
ment to  the  vice-chamberlain,  in  which  she  stated 
that  she  was  both  surprised  and  gratified  at  the  royal 
and  agreeable  command  to  stay  away  from  court, 
seeing  that  she  had  never  gone  there  but  for  her  own 
diversion,  and  also  from  a  desire  of  showing  some 
civility  to  the  king  and  queen !  The  lively  lady  fur- 
ther intimated,  that  perhaps  it  was  as  well  that  they 
who  dared  to  speak,  or  even  think,  truth,  should  be 
kept  away  from  a  court  where  it  was  unpalatable ; 
although  she  had  thought  that  in  supporting  truth 
and  innocence  in  the  palace,  she  was  paying  the  very 
highest  compliment  possible  to  both  their  Majesties. 

When  the  note  was  completed,  the  writer  gave  it 
to  Mr.  Stanhope  to  read.  The  stiff  vice-chamberlain 
felt  rather  shocked  at  the  tone,  and  politely  advised 
the  duchess  to  think  better  of  the  matter,  and  write 
another  note.  Her  Grace  consented,  but  the  second 
edition  was  so  more  highly  spiced,  and  so  more  pungent 
than  the  first,  that  the  officer  preferred  taking  the  lat- 
ter, which  he  must  have  placed  before  king  and  queen 
with  a  sort  of  decent  horror,  appropriate  to  a  func- 
tionary of  his  polite  vocation.  The  duchess  lost  the 
royal  favour,  and  the  duke,  her  husband,  lost  his 
posts. 

After  all,  it  seems  singular  that,  while  so  stupid  a 
piece  as  "  Polly "  was  prohibited,  the  representation 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  323 

of  the  "  Beggar's  Opera  "  still  went  on.  The  alleged 
offence  was  thus  seemingly  permitted,  while  visitation 
was  made  on  an  unoffending  piece  ;  and  subscriptions 
for  the  printing  of  that  piece  were  asked  for,  as  we 
have  seen,  by  the  Duchess  of  Queensberry,  in  the 
very  apartments  of  the  sovereign,  who  is  said  to  have 
been  most  offended  at  the  poet's  alleged  presumption. 

Other  poets  and  the  players  advanced  in  the  good 
will  of  Caroline  and  her  house  by  producing  pieces 
complimentary  to  the  Brunswick  family.  Thus  Rich, 
who  had  offended  the  royal  family  by  getting  up  the 
"Beggar's  Opera,"  in  January,  1728,  produced  Mrs. 
Haywood's  tragedy  of  "  Frederick,  Duke  of  Bruns- 
wick-Lunebourg,"  in  March,  1729.  The  authoress 
dedicated  her  play  to  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  and 
her  object  in  writing  it  was  to  represent  one  of  the 
ancestors  of  his  Royal  Highness  as  raised  to  the  impe- 
rial throne  in  consequence  of  his  virtues.  It  may  be 
a  question  whether  Caroline  or  her  husband,  or  son, 
could  approve  of  a  subject  which  exhibited  the  Bruns- 
wick monarch  falling  under  the  dagger  of  an  assassin. 
However  this  may  be,  the  public  was  indifferent  to 
the  piece  and  its  object ;  and,  after  being  represented 
three  times,  it  disappeared  for  ever  and  left  the  stage 
to  be  again  occupied  by  the  "  Beggar's  Opera,"  — 
Peachum  (Walpole),  Lockit  (Townshend),  and  Mat 
o'  the  Mint,  type  of  easy  financiers,  who  gaily  bid  the 
public  "  stand  and  deliver !  " 

On  the  first  occasion  on  which  George  I.  left  Eng- 
land to  visit  Hanover,  he  appointed  the  Prince  of 
Wales  regent  of  the  kingdom  during  his  absence. 
The  prince,  in  spite  of  his  limited  powers,  —  he  was 
unable  to  act,  on  the  smallest  point,  without  the 


324  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

sanction  of  ministers,  —  contrived  to  gain  consider- 
able and  well-deserved  popularity.  George  never 
again  allowed  him  to  hold  the  same  honourable 
office ;  and  the  son  and  father  hated  each  other  ever 
after.  In  the  May  of  this  year,  that  son,  now  king, 
quitted  England  in  order  to  visit  the  electorate,  but 
he  did  not  appoint  Frederick,  Prince  of  Wales,  as 
regent  during  his  absence.  He  delegated  that  office 
to  the  queen,  and  most  probably  by  the  queen's 
advice.  Frederick  had  not  been  long  in  London 
before  the  opposition  party  made  him,  if  not  their 
chief,  at  least  their  rallying-point.  The  prince  hated 
his  father  heartily  and  openly,  and  he  had  as  little 
regard  for  his  mother.  When  application  was  made 
to  Parliament  to  pay  some  alleged  deficiencies  in  the 
civil  list,  Frederick  was  particularly  severe  on  the 
extravagance  of  his  sire,  and  the  method  adopted  to 
remedy  it.  He  talked  loudly  of  what  he  would  have 
done  in  a  similar  extremity,  or  rather  of  how  he  would 
never  have  allowed  himself  to  fall  into  so  extreme  a 
difficulty.  He  was  doubly  in  the  wrong,  —  "  in  the 
first  place,  for  saying  what  he  ought  only  to  have 
thought ;  and,  in  the  next,  for  not  thinking  what  he 
ought  not  to  have  said."  It  was  not  likely,  even  if 
the  king  had  been  so  disposed,  that  the  queen  would 
have  consented  to  an  arrangement  which  would  have 
materially  diminished  her  own  consequence.  She 
was  accordingly  invested  with  the  office  of  regent, 
and  she  performed  its  duties  with  a  grace  and  an 
efficiency  which  caused  universal  congratulation  that 
the  post  had  not  been  confided  to  other,  and  neces- 
sarily weaker,  hands.  She  had  Sir  Robert  Walpole 
at  her  side  to  aid  her  with  his  counsel,  and  the  pres- 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  325 

ence  of  the  baronet's  enemy,  Lord  Townshend,  with 
the  king,  had  no  effect  in  damaging  the  power  effect- 
ively administered  by  Caroline  and  her  great  minister. 

It  was  not  merely  during  the  absence  of  the  king 
in  Hanover  that  Caroline  may  be  said  to  have  ruled 
in  England.  The  year  1730  affords  us  an  illustration 
on  this  point. 

The  dissenters,  who  had  originally  consented  to 
the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts,  upon  a  most  unself- 
ish ground,  —  for  they  sacrificed  their  own  interest, 
in  order  that  the  Romanists  might  be  prevented  from 
being  admitted  to  places  of  power  and  trust,  —  now 
demanded  the  repeal  of  those  acts.  The  request  per- 
plexed the  Crown  and  ministry,  especially  when  an 
election  was  pending.  To  promise  the  dissenters 
(and  it  was  more  especially  the  Presbyterians  who 
moved  in  this  matter)  relief,  would  be  to  deprive  the 
Crown  of  the  votes  of  churchmen ;  and  to  reject  the 
petition,  would  be  to  set  every  dissenter  against 
the  government  and  its  candidates.  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  in  his  perplexity,  looked  around  for  a  good 
genius  to  rescue  him  from  the  dilemma  in  which  he 
was  placed.  He  paused,  on  considering  Hoadly, 
Bishop  of  Salisbury.  The  bishop  was  the  very  deus 
ex  machind,  most  needed,  but  he  had  been  shabbily 
treated  on  matters  of  preferment ;  and  Walpole,  who 
had  face  for  most  things,  had  not  the  face  to  ask  help 
from  a  man  whom  he  had  ill-treated.  The  queen 
stepped  in,  and  levelled  the  difficulty. 

Caroline  sent  for  Hoadly  to  come  to  her  at  Ken- 
sington. She  received  the  prelate  with  affability,  and 
overwhelmed  him  with  flattery,  compliments  on  his 
ability,  and  grateful  expressions  touching  his  zeal,  and 


326  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

the  value  of  his  services,  in  the  king's  cause.  She 
had  now,  she  said,  a  further  service  to  ask  at  his 
hands ;  and,  of  course,  it  was  one  which  demanded 
of  him  no  sacrifice  of  opinion  or  consistency :  the 
queen  would  have  been  the  last  person  to  ask  such  a 
thing  of  the  reverend  prelate  !  The  service  was  this. 
The  dissenters  required  the  repeal  of  the  Test  and 
Corporation  Acts.  The  government  did  not  dispute 
their  right  to  have  such  a  concession  made  to  them,  but 
it  did  feel  that  the  moment  was  inconvenient ;  and, 
therefore,  Bishop  Hoadly,  for  whom  the  whole  body 
of  dissenters  entertained  the  most  profound  respect, 
was  solicited  to  make  this  opinion  known  to  them, 
and  to  induce  them  to  defer  their  petition  to  a  more 
favourable  opportunity. 

The  queen  supported  her  request  by  such  close  and 
cogent  arguments,  flattered  the  bishop  so  adroitly, 
and  drew  such  a  picture  of  the  possibly  deplorable 
results  of  an  attempt  to  force  the  repeal  of  the  acts 
alluded  to,  at  the  present  moment,  that  Hoadly  may 
be  excused  if  he  began  to  think  that  the  stability  of 
the  house  of  Hanover  depended  on  the  course  he 
should  take  in  this  conjuncture.  He  was  not,  how- 
ever, to  be  cajoled  out  of  his  opinions,  or  his  in- 
dependence ;  he  pronounced  the  restrictive  acts 
unreasonable,  politically  —  and  profane,  theologically. 
He  added,  that,  as  a  friend  to  religious  and  civil  lib- 
erty, he  would  vote  for  the  repeal,  whenever,  and  by 
whomsoever,  proposed.  He  should  stultify  himself, 
if  he  did  otherwise.  All  that  was  in  his  "little 
power,"  consistent  with  his  honour  and  reputation, 
he  would,  nevertheless,  willingly  do.  If  he  could  be 
clearly  convinced  that  the  present  moment  was  un- 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  327 

propitious  for  pressing  the  demand,  and  perilous  to 
the  stability  of  the  government,  he  would  not  fail 
to  urge  upon  the  dissenters  to  postpone  presenting 
their  petition,  until  the  coming  of  a  more  favourable 
opportunity. 

The  out-of-door  world  no  sooner  heard  of  this 
interview  between  the  queen  and  the  prelate,  than  a 
report  arose  that  her  Majesty  had  succeeded  in  con- 
vincing the  right  reverend  father  that  the  claims  of 
the  dissenters  were  unreasonable,  and  that  the  bishop, 
as  a  consequence  of  such  conviction,  would  hence- 
forth oppose  them  resolutely. 

Hoadly  became  alarmed,  for  such  a  report  damaged 
all  parties ;  and  he  was  very  anxious  to  maintain  a 
character  for  consistency,  and  at  the  same  time  not 
to  lose  his  little  remnant  of  interest  at  court.  He 
tried  in  vain  to  get  a  promise  from  Sir  Robert,  that, 
if  the  dissenters  would  defer  preferring  their  claims 
until  the  meeting  of  a  new  Parliament,  it  should  then 
meet  with  the  government  support.  Sir  Robert  was 
too  wary  to  make  such  a  promise,  although  he  hinted 
his  conviction  of  the  reasonableness  of  the  claim,  and 
that  it  would  be  supported  when  so  preferred.  But 
the  bishop,  in  his  turn,  was  too  cautious  to  allow  him- 
self to  be  caught  by  so  flimsy  an  encouragement ; 
and  he  was  admitted  to  several  subsequent  consulta- 
tions with  the  queen ;  but,  clever  as  she  was,  she 
could  not  move  the  bishop.  Hoadly  was  resolved 
that  the  dissenters  should  know  that,  if  he  thought 
they  might  with  propriety  defer  their  petition,  he 
would  uphold  its  prayer  whenever  presented. 

In  the  meantime,  Sir  Robert  extricated  himself  and 
the  government  cleverly.  Caroline  doubtless  enjoyed 


328  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

this  exercise  of  his  ability,  as  well  as  its  results.  The 
dissenters,  organising  an  agitation,  had  established  a 
central  committee  in  London,  all  the  members  of 
which  were  bound  to  Sir  Robert ;  "  all  monied  men, 
and  scriveners,  and  chosen  by  his  contrivance.  They 
spoke  only  to  be  prompted,  and  acted  only  as  he 
guided."  '  This  committee  had  a  solemnly  farcical 
meeting  with  the  administration,  to  hold  a  consulta- 
tion in  the  matter.  Sir  Robert  and  the  speakers 
confined  themselves  to  the  unseasonableness,  but 
commended  the  reasonableness  of  the  petition.  "  My 
lord  president  looked  wise,  was  dull,  took  snuff,  and 
said  nothing.  Lord  Harrington  (the  Mr.  Stanhope 
who  had  waited  on  the  Duchess  of  Queensberry)  took 
the  same  silent,  passive  part.  The  lord  chancellor 
(King)  and  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  had  done  better, 
had  they  followed  that  example,  too  ;  but  both  spoke 
very  plentifully,  and  were  both  equally  unintelligible ; 
the  one  (King)  from  having  lost  his  understanding, 
and  the  other  from  never  having  had  any."  * 

The  committee,  after  this  interview,  came  to  the 
resolution,  that  if  a  petition  were  presented  to  Par- 
liament now,  in  favour  of  the  repeal  of  the  Test  and 
Corporation  Acts,  "  there  was  no  prospect  of  suc- 
cess." This  resolution  saved  the  administration  from 
the  storm  threatened  by  the  Presbyterian  party.  That 
party  considered  itself  betrayed  by  its  own  delegates, 
the  queen  and  Sir  Robert  were  well  satisfied  with  the 
result,  and  the  bishop  was  looked  upon  by  the  dis- 
senters as  having  supported  their  cause  too  little,  and 
by  the  queen's  cabinet  as  having  supported  it  too  much. 

In  this  case  it  may,  perhaps,  be  fairly  asserted  that 

1  Lord  Hervey.         *  Lord  Hervey. 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  329 

the  queen  and  the  minister,  while  they  punished  the 
dissenters,  caused  the  blame  to  fall  upon  the  Church. 
Their  chief  argument  was,  that  the  opposition  of  the 
clergy  would  be  a  source  of  the  greatest  embarrass- 
ment to  the  administration.  It  had  long  been  the 
fashion  to  make  the  Church  suffer,  at  least  in  repu- 
tation, on  every  occasion  when  opportunity  offered, 
and  without  any  thought  as  to  whether  the  establish- 
ment deserved  it  or  not.  It  was  in  politics  precisely 
as  it  was  in  Sir  John  Vanbrugh's  comedy  of  the 
"Provoked  Wife."  It  will  be  remembered  that,  in 
that  dramatic  mirror,  which  represents  nature  as 
objects  are  seen  reflected  in  flawed  glass,  when  the 
tailor  enters  with  a  bundle,  the  elegant  Lord  Rake 
exclaims,  "  Let  me  see  what's  in  that  bundle ! " 
"  An't  please  you,"  says  the  tailor,  "  it  is  the  doctor 
of  the  parish's  gown."  "The  doctor's  gown  !  "  cries 
my  lord,  and  then,  turning  to  Sir  John  Brute,  he 
exultingly  inquires,  or  requires,  "  Hark  you,  knight ; 
you  won't  stick  at  abusing  the  clergy,  will  you  ? " 
"  No ! "  shouts  Brute,  "  I'm  drunk,  and  I'll  abuse 
anything!"  "Then,"  says  Lord  Rake,  "you  shall 
wear  this  gown  whilst  you  charge  the  watch ;  that 
though  the  blows  fall  upon  you,  the  scandal  may  light 
upon  the  Church  !  "  "A  generous  design,  by  all  the 
gods ! "  is  the  ecstatic  consent  of  the  pantheistic 
Brute  —  and  it  is  one  to  which  Amen !  has  been 
cried  by  many  of  the  Brute  family,  since  first  it  was 
uttered  by  their  illustrious  predecessor. 

Meanwhile,  Caroline  could  be  as  earnest  and  inter- 
ested upon  trifles  as  she  was  upon  questions  of 
political  importance.  She  loved  both  to  plague  and 
to  talk  about  Mrs.  Howard. 


330          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

That  the  queen  was  not  more  courteous  to  this 
lady  than  their  respective  positions  demanded,  there 
is  abundant  evidence.  In  a  very  early  period  of  the 
reign,  she  was  required,  as  bedchamber-woman,  to 
present  a  basin  for  the  queen  to  wash  her  hands  in, 
and  to  perform  the  service  kneeling.  The  etiquette 
was,  for  the  basin  and  ewer  to  be  set  on  the  queen's 
table  by  a  page  of  the  back  stairs :  the  office  of  the 
bedchamber-woman  was  then  to  take  both,  pour  out 
the  water,  set  it  before  the  queen,  and  remain  kneel- 
ing while  her  Majesty  washed,  of  which  refreshing 
ceremony  the  kneeling  attendant  was  the  only  one 
who  dared  be  the  ocular  witness. 

This  service  of  genuflexion  remained  in  courtly 
fashion  till  the  death  of  Queen  Charlotte.  In  the 
meantime,  Mrs.  Howard  was  by  no  means  disposed 
to  render  it  to  Queen  Caroline.  The  scene  which 
ensued  was  highly  amusing.  On  the  service  being 
demanded,  said  Caroline  to  Lord  Hervey,  "Mrs. 
Howard  proceeded  to  tell  me,  with  her  little  fierce 
eyes,  and  cheeks  as  red  as  your  coat,  that,  positively, 
she  would  not  do  it ;  to  which  I  made  her  no  answer 
then  in  anger,  but  calmly,  as  I  would  have  said  to  a 
naughty  child :  '  Yes,  my  dear  Howard,  I  am  sure 
you  will.  I  know  you  will.  Go,  go  ;  fie  for  shame  ! 
Go,  my  good  Howard ;  we  will  talk  of  this  another 
time.'  Mrs.  Howard  did  come  round ;  and  I  told 
her,"  said  Caroline,  "I  knew  we  should  be  good 
friends  again  ;  but  could  not  help  adding,  in  a  little 
more  serious  voice,  that  I  owned,  of  all  my  servants, 
I  had  least  expected,  as  I  had  least  deserved  it,  such 
treatment  from  her ;  when  she  knew  I  had  held  her 
up  at  a  time  when  it  was  in  my  power,  if  I  had 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  331 

pleased,  any  hour  of  the  day,  to  let  her  drop  through 
my  ringers,  thus  —  " 

With  what  a  lumbering  process  this  royal  dressing 
must  have  been  got  through.  Imperious  masters 
and  mistresses,  however,  sometimes  meet  with  ser- 
vants who,  while  doing  their  office,  could  render  the 
object  of  it  supremely  ridiculous.  Witness  Turenne 
passing  Louis  the  Fourteenth's  shirt,  which  that 
royal  gentleman  changed  but  every  other  day, — 
passing  it  so  rapidly  over  the  head  of  that  Lord's 
anointed,  that  the  warrior-valet  set  the  long  tassels 
appended  to  his  gloves  in  violent  swing,  and  there- 
with most  irreverently  filliped  the  august  nose  of 
"LEtat  c'est  moil"  But  Turenne  paid  with  exile 
for  his  joke. 

Caroline's  own  account  of  the  fracas  between  Mrs. 
Howard  and  her  husband,  is  too  characteristic  to  be 
passed  over.  The  curious  in  such  matters  will  find 
it  in  full  detail  in  "Lord  Hervey's  Memoirs."  In 
this  place  it  will  suffice  to  say,  that,  according  to 
Lord  Hervey,  Mr.  Howard  had  a  personal  interview 
with  the  queen.  Caroline  described  the  circumstances 
of  it  with  great  graphic  power.  At  this  interview  he 
had  said,  that  he  would  take  his  wife  out  of  her 
Majesty's  coach  if  he  met  her  in  it.  Caroline  told 
him  to  "  Do  it,  if  he  dare ;  though,"  she  added,  "  I 
was  horribly  afraid  of  him  (for  we  were  tlte-d-tSte) 
all  the  time  I  was  thus  playing  the  bully.  What 
added  to  my  fear  on  this  occasion,"  said  the  queen, 
"  was,  that  as  I  knew  him  to  be  so  brutal,  as  well  as 
a  little  mad,  and  seldom  quite  sober,  so  that  I  did  not 
think  it  impossible  but  that  he  might  throw  me  out 
of  window  (for  it  was  in  this  very  room  our  interview 


332  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

was,  and  that  sash  then  open,  as  it  is  now) ;  but  as 
soon  as  I  got  near  the  door,  and  thought  myself  safe 
from  being  thrown  out  of  the  window,  I  resumed  my 
grand  tone  of  queen,  and  said  I  would  be  glad  to  see 
who  would  dare  to  open  my  coach  door,  and  take  out 
one  of  my  servants;  knowing  all  the  time  that  he 
might  do  so  if  he  would,  and  that  he  could  have  his 
wife,  and  I  the  affront.  Then  I  told  him  that  my 
resolution  was,  positively,  neither  to  force  his  wife  to 
go  to  him,  if  she  had  no  mind  to  it,  nor  to  keep  her 
if  she  had.  He  then  said  he  would  complain  to  the 
king ;  upon  which  I  again  assumed  my  high  tone, 
and  said,  the  king  had  nothing  to  do  with  my  ser- 
vants ;  and,  for  that  reason,  he  might  save  himself 
the  trouble,  as  I  was  sure  the  king  would  give  him  no 
answer  but  that  it  was  none  of  his  business  to  con- 
cern himself  with  my  family ;  and  after  a  good  deal 
more  conversation  of  this  sort  (I  standing  close  to 
the  door  all  the  while  to  give  me  courage),  Mr. 
Howard  and  I  bade  one  another  good  morning,  and 
he  withdrew." 

Caroline  proceeded  to  call  Lord  Trevor  "an  old 
fool,"  for  coming  to  her  with  thanks  from  Mrs.  How- 
ard, and  suggestions  that  the  queen  should  give 
£1,200  a  year  to  the  husband  for  the  consent  of  the 
latter  to  his  wife's  being  retained  in  the  queen's 
household.  Caroline  replied  to  this  suggestion  with 
as  high  a  tone  as  she  could  have  used  when  address- 
ing herself  to  Mr.  Howard ;  but  with  a  coarseness  of 
spirit  and  sentiment  which  hardly  became  a  queen, 
although  they  do  not  appear  to  have  been  considered 
unbecoming  in  a  queen  at  that  time.  "  I  thought," 
said  Caroline,  "  I  had  done  full  enough,  and  that  it 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  333 

was  a  little  too  much,  not  only  to  keep  the  king's 
* guenipes '  (trollops)  under  my  roof,  but  to  pay  them, 
too.  I  pleaded  poverty  to  my  good  Lord  Trevor,  and 
said  I  would  do  anything  to  keep  so  good  a  servant 
as  Mrs.  Howard  about  me;  but  that  for  the  .£1,200 
a  year,  I  really  could  not  afford  it."  The  king  used 
to  make  presents  to  the  queen  of  fine  Hanoverian 
horses,  not  that  she  might  be  gratified,  but  that  he 
might,  when  he  wanted  them,  have  horses  maintained 
out  of  her  purse.  So  he  gave  her  a  bedchamber- 
woman  in  Mrs.  Howard ;  but  Caroline  would  not 
have  her  on  the  same  terms  as  the  horses,  and  the 
£1,200  a  year  were  probably  paid  —  not  by  the  king, 
after  all,  but  by  the  people. 

Lord  Chesterfield  describes  the  figure  of  Mrs. 
Howard  as  being  above  the  middle  size,  and  well- 
shaped,  with  a  face  more  pleasing  than  beautiful.1 
She  was  remarkable  for  the  extreme  fairness  and 
fineness  of  her  hair.  "  Her  arms  were  square  and 
lean,  that  is,  ugly.  Her  countenance  was  an  un- 
decided one,  and  announced  neither  good  nor  ill 
nature,  neither  sense  nor  the  want  of  it,  neither  vivac- 
ity nor  dulness."  It  is  difficult  to  understand  how 
such  a  face  could  be  "pleasing  ;  "  and  the  following  is 
the  characteristic  of  a  commonplace  person.  "She 
had  good  natural  sense,  not  without  art,  but  in  her 
conversation  dwelt  tediously  upon  details  and  minu- 
ties.  Of  the  man  whom  she  had,  when  very  young, 
hastily  married  for  love,  and  heartily  hated  at  leisure, 
Chesterfield  says,  '  he  was  sour,  dull,  and  sullen.' " 
The  same  writer  sets  it  down  as  equally  unaccount- 
able that  the  lady  should  have  loved  such  a  man,  or 
1  Chesterfield's  Life  and  Letters  ;  edited  by  Lord  Mahon. 


334  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

that  the  man  should  ever  have  loved  anybody.  The 
noble  lord  is  also  of  opinion  that  only  a  Platonic 
friendship  reigned  between  the  king  and  the  favour- 
ite ;  and  that  it  was  as  innocent  as  that  which  was 
said  to  have  existed  between  himself  and  Miss  Bel- 
lenden. 

Very  early  during  the  intercourse,  "  the  busy  and 
speculative  politicians  of  the  antechambers,  who  knew 
everything,  but  knew  everything  wrong,"  imagined 
that  the  lady's  influence  must  be  all-powerful,  seeing 
that  her  admirer  paid  to  her  the  homage  of  devoting 
to  her  the  best  hours  of  his  day.  She  did  not  reject 
solicitations,  we  are  told,  because  she  was  unwilling 
to  have  it  supposed  that  she  was  without  power. 
She  neither  rejected  solicitations,  nor  bound  herself 
by  promises,  but  hinted  at  difficulties ;  and,  in  short, 
as  Chesterfield  well  expresses  it,  she  used  "  all  that 
trite  cant  of  those  who  with  power  will  not,  and  of 
those  who  without  power  cannot,  grant  the  requested 
favours."  So  far  from  being  able  to  make  peers,  she 
was  not  even  successful  in  a  well-meant  attempt  to 
procure  a  place  of  ^200  a  year  "for  John  Gay,  a 
very  poor  and  honest  man,  and  no  bad  poet,  only  be- 
cause he  was  a  poet,  which  the  king  considered  as  a 
mechanic."  Mrs.  Howard  had  little  influence,  either 
in  the  house  of  the  prince,  or,  when  she  became 
Countess  of  Suffolk,  in  that  of  the  king.  Caroline, 
we  are  told,  "had  taken  good  care  that  Lady  Suf- 
folk's apartment  should  not  lead  to  power  and  favour ; 
and  from  time  to  time  made  her  feel  her  inferiority 
by  hindering  the  king  from  going  to  her  room  for 
three  or  four  days,  representing  it  as  the  seat  of  a 
political  faction." 


Hi,)  A  >ir>l>:>i  i  :iu,ill.  I 

(.III 


VGLAND 

have  loved  anybody.     The 
rd  is  also  of  opinion  that  only  a   Platonic 
igned  between  the  king  and  the  favour- 
ite; and  that  it  was  as  innocent  as  that  which  was 
said  to  have  existed  between  himself  and  Miss  Bel- 
lenden. 

Very  early  during  the  intercourse,  *'  the  busy  and 
speculative  politicians  of  the  antechambers,  who  knew 
everything,  but  knew  everything  wrong,"  imagined 
that  the  lady's  influence  must  be  all-powerful,  seeing 
that  her  admirer  paid  to  her  the  homage  of  devoting 
er  the  best  hours  of  his  day.  She  did  not  reject 


by  promises,  but  hinted  at 

l«    C'  J    mull    • 


a  place  of  £200  a  year  "  for  John  Gay,  a 
poor  and  honest  man,  and  no  bad  poet,  only  be- 

;e  he  was  a  poet,  which  the  king  considered  as  a 
mechanic."  Mrs.  Howard  had  little  influence,  either 
in  the  house  of  the  prince,  or,  when  she  became 
Countess  of  Suffolk,  in  that  of  the  king.  Caroline, 
we  are  told,  "had  taken  good  care  that  Lady  Suf- 
folk's apartment  should  not  lead  to  power  and  favour  ; 
and  from  time  to  time  made  her  feel  her  inferiority 

hinderin.  rom  going  to  her  roon. 

e  or  four  d.  esenting  it  as  the  seat  of  a 

;-:  :.' 


George  William  Frederick  (afterwards  George 
III.) 

Photogravure  from  the  painting  by  Gainsborough 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    MARRIAGE   OF    THE    PRINCESS    ANNE 

Violent  Opposition  to  the  King  by  Prince  Frederick  —  Readings  at 
Windsor  Castle  —  The  Queen's  Patronage  of  Stephen  Duck  — 
His  Melancholy  End  —  Glance  at  Passing  Events  —  Precipitate 
Flight  of  Doctor  Nichols  —  Princess  Anne's  Determination  to 
Get  a  Husband  —  Louis  XV.  Proposed  as  a  Suitor  ;  Negotiation 
Broken  Off  — The  Prince  of  Orange's  Offer  Accepted  —  Ugly 
and  Deformed  —  The  King  and  Queen  Averse  to  the  Union  — 
Dowry  Settled  on  the  Princess  —  Anecdote  of  the  Duchess  of 
Marlborough  —  Illness  of  the  Bridegroom  —  Ceremonies  Attend- 
ant on  the  Marriage  —  Mortification  of  the  Queen  —  The  Public 
Nuptial  Chamber — Offence  Given  to  the  Irish  Peers  —  The 
Queen  and  Lady  Suffolk  —  Homage  Paid  by  the  Princess  to  Her 
Deformed  Husband  —  Discontent  of  Prince  Frederick  —  His  Anx- 
iety Not  Unnatural  —  Congratulatory  Addresses  by  the  Lords 
and  Commons  —  Spirited  Conduct  of  the  Queen  —  Lord  Ches- 
terfield —  Agitations  on  Walpole's  Celebrated  Excise  Scheme 
—  Lord  Stair  Delegated  to  Remonstrate  with  the  Queen  —  Awk- 
ward Performance  of  His  Mission  —  Sharply  Rebuked  by  the 
Queen  —  Details  of  the  Interview  —  The  Queen's  Success  in 
Overcoming  the  King's  Antipathy  to  Walpole  —  Comments  of 
the  Populace  —  Royal  Interview  with  a  Bishop. 

THE  social  happiness  of  Caroline  began  now  to  be 
affected  by  the  conduct  of  her  son  Frederick,  Prince 
of  Wales.  Since  his  arrival  in  England,  in  1728,  he 
had  been  but  coolly  entertained  by  his  parents,  who 
refused  to  pay  the  debts  he  had  accumulated  in  Han- 
over, previous  to  his  leaving  the  electorate.  He  was 
soon  in  the  arms  of  the  opposition  ;  and  the  court  had 

335 


336  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

no  more  violent  an  enemy,  political  or  personal,  than 
this  prince. 

His  conduct,  however,  —  and  some  portion  of  it 
was  far  from  being  unprovoked,  —  did  not  prevent 
the  court  from  entering  into  some  social  enjoyments 
of  a  harmless  and  not  overamusing  nature.  Among 
these  may  be  reckoned  the  "  readings  "  at  Windsor 
Castle.  These  readings  consisted  of  the  poetry,  or 
verses  rather,  of  that  Stephen  Duck  the  thresher, 
whose  rhymes  Swift  has  ridiculed  in  lines  as  weak  as 
any  which  ever  fell  from  the  pen  of  Duck.  The  lat- 
ter was  a  Wiltshire  labourer,  who  supported,  or  tried 
to  support  a  family  upon  the  modest  wages  of  four 
and  sixpence  a  week.  In  his  leisure  hours,  whenever 
those  could  have  occurred,  he  cultivated  poetry ;  and 
two  of  his  pieces,  "The  Shunammite,"  and  "The 
Thresher's  Labour,"  were  publicly  read  in  the  draw- 
ing-room at  Windsor  Castle,  in  1730,  by  Lord  Mac- 
clesfield.  Caroline  procured  for  the  poet  the  office 
of  yeoman  of  the  guard,  and  afterward  made  him 
keeper  of  her  grotto,  Merlin's  Cave,  at  Richmond. 
This  last  act,  and  the  patronage  and  pounds  which 
Caroline  wasted  upon  the  wayward  and  worthless 
Savage,  show  that  Swift's  epigram  upon  the  busts  in 
the  hermitage  at  Richmond  was  not  based  upon 
truth: 

"  Louis  the  living  learned  fed, 
And  raised  the  scientific  head. 
Our  frugal  queen,  to  save  her  meat, 
Exalts  the  heads  that  cannot  eat" 

Swift's  anger  against  the  queen,  who  once  promised 
him  some  medals,  but  who  never  kept  her  word,  and 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  337 

from  whom  he  had  hoped,  perhaps,  for  a  patronage 
which  he  failed  to  acquire,  was  further  illustrated 
about  this  time  in  a  fiercely  satirical  poem,  in  which 
he  says : 

"  May  Caroline  continue  long  — 
For  ever  fair  and  young  —  in  song.  • 
What  though  the  royal  carcass  must, 
Squeez'd  in  a  coffin,  turn  to  dust? 
Those  elements  her  name  compose, 
Like  atoms,  are  exempt  from  blows." 

And,  in  allusion  to  the  princesses  and  their  pros- 
pects, he  adds,  that  Caroline  "hath  graces  of  her 
own: " 

"  Three  Graces  by  Lucina  brought  her, 
Just  three,  and  ev'ry  Grace  a  daughter. 
Here  many  a  king  his  heart  and  crown 
Shall  at  their  snowy  feet  lay  down ; 
In  royal  robes  they  come  by  dozens 
To  court  their  English-German  cousins : 
Besides  a  pair  of  princely  babies 
That,  five  years  hence,  will  both  be  Hebes." 

The  royal  patronage  of  Duck  ultimately  raised 
him  to  the  Church,  and  made  of  him  Vicar  of  Kew. 
But  it  failed  to  bring  to  the  thresher  substantial  hap- 
piness. He  had  little  enjoyment  in  the  station  to 
which  he  was  elevated ;  and  weary  of  the  restraints 
it  imposed  on  him,  he  ultimately  escaped  from  them 
by  drowning  himself. 

Of  the  Graces  who  were  the  daughters  of  Caroline, 
the  marriage  of  one  began  now  to  be  canvassed. 
Meanwhile,  there  was  much  food  for  mere  talk  in 
common  passing  events  at  home.  The  courtiers  had 


338          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

to  express  sympathy  at  their  Majesties'  being  upset 
in  their  carriage,  when  travelling  only  from  Kew  to 
London.  Then  the  son  of  a  Stuart  had  just  died 
in  London.  He  was  that  Duke  of  Cleveland  who 
was  the  eldest  son  of  Charles  II.  and  Barbara  Villiers. 
In  the  year  1731  died  two  far  more  remarkable  peo- 
ple. On  the  8th  of  April,  "Mrs.  Elizabeth  Crom- 
well, daughter  of  Richard  Cromwell,  the  Protector, 
and  granddaughter  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  died  at  her 
house  in  Bedford  Row,  in  the  eighty-second  year  of 
her  age."  In  the  same  month  passed  away  a  man 
whose  writings  as  much  amused  Caroline  as  they 
have  done  commoner  people,  —  Defoe.  He  had  a 
not  much  superior  intellectual  training  to  that  of 
Stephen  Duck,  but  he  was  "  one  of  the  best  English 
writers  that  ever  had  so  mean  an  education."  The 
deaths  in  the  same  year  of  the  eccentric  and  profli- 
gate Duke  of  Wharton,  and  of  the  relict  of  that  Duke 
of  Monmouth  who  lost  his  head  for  rebellion  against 
James  II.,  gave  further  subject  of  conversation  in  the 
court  circle  ;  where,  if  it  was  understood  that  death 
was  inevitable  and  necessary,  no  one  could  under- 
stand what  had  induced  Doctor  Nichols,  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  to  steal  books  from  the  libraries 
in  that  university  town.  The  court  was  highly  merry 
at  the  precipitate  flight  of  the  doctor,  after  he  was 
found  out ;  but  there  was  double  the  mirth  the  next 
year  at  the  awkwardness  of  the  Emperor  of  Germany, 
who,  happening  to  fire  at  a  stag,  chanced  to  shoot 
Prince  Schwartzenberg,  his  master  of  the  horse. 
But  we  turn  from  these  matters  to  those  of  wooing 
and  marriage. 

In  the  year  1733,  the  proud  and  eldest  daughter 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  339 

of  Caroline,  she  who  had  expressed  her  vexation  at 
having  brothers,  who  stood  between  her  and  the 
succession  to  the  crown  —  a  crown,  to  wear  which 
for  a  day,  she  averred  she  would  willingly  die  when 
the  day  was  over  —  in  the  year  above  named,  the 
Princess  Anne  had  reached  the  mature  age  of  twenty- 
four,  and  her  hand  yet  remained  disengaged.  Neither 
crown  nor  suitor  had  yet  been  placed  at  her  disposal. 
A  suitor  with  a  crown  was  once,  however,  very  nearly 
on  the  point  of  fulfilling  the  great  object  of  her 
ambition,  and  that  when  she  was  not  more  than  six- 
teen years  of  age.  The  lover  proposed  was  no  less 
a  potentate  than  Louis  XV.,  and  he  would  have 
offered  her  a  seat  on  a  throne  which,  proud  as  she 
was,  she  might  have  accepted  without  much  con- 
descension. She  would  have  accepted  the  pleasant 
destiny  which  appeared  framed  for  her,  with  more 
alacrity  than  the  last  English  princess  who  had  been 
wooed  by  Gallic  king  —  with  more  readiness  than 
Mary  of  England  displayed  when  she  reluctantly  left 
the  court  of  her  brother,  Henry  VIII.,  and  the  Duke 
of  Brandon  there,  to  espouse  all  that  survived  of  the 
once  gay  and  gallant  Louis  XII. 

It  is  said  that  the  proposal  to  unite  Louis  XV.  and 
the  Princess  Anne  originated  with  the  French  minis- 
ter, the  Duke  de  Bourbon,  and  that  the  project  was 
entertained  with  much  favour  and  complacency,  until 
it  suddenly  occurred  to  some  one  that  if  the  princess 
became  queen  in  France,  she  would  be  expected  to 
conform  to  the  religion  of  France.  This,  it  was 
urged,  could  not  be  thought  of  by  a  family  which 
was  a  reigning  family  only  by  virtue  of  its  preeminent 
Protestantism.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred 


340          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

to  any  one  that  when  Maria  Henrietta  espoused 
Charles  I.,  she  had  not  been  even  asked  to  become 
a  professed  member  of  the  Church  of  England,  and 
that  we  might  have  asked  for  the  same  toleration  in 
France  for  the  daughter  of  Caroline,  as  had  been 
given  in  England  to  the  daughter  of  the  "Grand 
Henri."  However  this  may  be,  the  affair  was  not 
pursued  to  its  end,  and  Caroline  could  not  say  to  her 
daughter,  what  we  have  recorded  that  Stanislas  said 
to  his  on  the  morning  he  received  an  offer  for  her 
from  the  young  King  Louis  :  "  Bon  jour  I  ma  fille : 
vous  Ites  Reine  de  France  !  " 

Anne  was  unlucky.  She  was  deprived  of  her  suc- 
cession to  the  crown  of  England  by  the  birth  of  her 
brothers,  and  she  was  kept  back  from  that  of  France 
by  a  question  of  religion.  She  lived  moodily  on  for 
some  half-dozen  years,  and,  nothing  more  advantage- 
ous offering,  she  looked  good-naturedly  on  one  of  the 
ugliest  princes  in  Europe.  But  then  he  happened 
to  be  a  sovereign  prince  in  his  way.  This  was  the 
Prince  of  Orange,  who  resembled  Alexander  the 
Great  only  in  having  a  wry  neck  and  a  halt  in  his 
gait.  But  he  also  had  other  deformities  from  which 
the  Macedonian  was  free. 

George  and  Caroline  were  equally  indisposed  to 
accept  the  prince  for  a  son-in-law,  and  the  parental 
disinclination  was  expressed  in  words  to  the  effect 
that  neither  king  nor  queen  would  force  the  feelings 
of  their  daughter,  whom  they  left  free  to  accept  or 
reject  the  misshapen  suitor  who  aspired  to  the  plump 
hand  and  proud  person  of  the  Princess  Anne. 

The  lady  thought  of  her  increasing  years ;  that 
lovers  were  not  to  be  found  on  every  bush,  especially 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  341 

sovereign  lovers ;  and,  remembering  that  there  were 
princesses  of  England  before  her  who  had  contrived 
to  live  in  much  state  and  a  certain  degree  of  happi- 
ness as  Princesses  of  Orange,  she  declared  her  inten- 
tion of  following  the  same  course,  and  compelling 
her  ambition  to  stoop  to  the  same  modest  fortune. 

The  queen  was  well  aware  that  her  daughter  knew 
nothing  more  of  the  prince  than  what  she  could 
collect  from  his  counterfeit  presentments  limned  by 
flattering  artists ;  and  Caroline  suggested  that  she 
should  not  be  too  ready  to  accept  a  lover  whom  she 
had  not  seen.  The  princess  was  resolute  in  her 
determination  to  take  him  at  once,  "  for  better,  for 
worse."  Her  royal  father  was  somewhat  impatient 
and  chafed  by  such  pertinacity,  and  exclaimed  that 
the  prince  was  the  ugliest  man  in  Holland,  and  he 
could  not  more  terribly  describe  him.  "  I  do  not 
care,"  said  she,  "  how  ugly  he  may  be.  If  he  were  a 
Dutch  baboon  I  would  marry  him."  "  Nay,  then,  have 
your  way,"  said  George,  in  his  strong  Westphalian 
accent,  which  was  always  rougher  and  stronger  when 
he  was  vexed,  "  have  your  way :  you  will  find  baboon 
enough,  I  promise  you  ! " 

It  would  hardly  be  safe,  seldom  flattering,  at  the 
best  of  times,  for  candidates  for  the  office  of  "  son-in- 
law  "  to  hear  their  merits,  persons,  and  prospects 
discussed  by  the  family  circle  into  which  they  are 
seeking  to  make  entrance.  Could  the  aspiring  Prince 
of  Orange  only  have  heard  how  amiably  he  was 
spoken  of  enfamille  by  his  future  relations,  he  would 
perhaps  have  been  less  ambitious  of  completing  the 
alliance.  Happily  these  family  secrets  were  not 
revealed  until  long  after  he  could  be  conscious  of 


342  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

them,  and  accordingly  his  honest  proposals  were 
accepted  with  ostentatious  respect  and  ill-covered 
ridicule. 

Caroline  spoke  of  the  bridegroom  as  "the  animal." 
His  intended  wife,  when  she  heard  of  his  arrival,  was 
in  no  hurry  to  meet  him,  but  went  on  at  her  harpsi- 
chord, surrounded  by  a  number  of  opera  people. 
When  the  poor  "  groom  "  fell  sick,  not  one  of  the 
royal  family  condescended  to  visit  him,  and  though  he 
himself  maintained  a  dignified  silence  on  this  insulting 
conduct,  his  suite,  who  could  not  imitate  their  master's 
indifference,  made  comment  thereupon  loud  and  fre- 
quent enough.  They  got  nothing  by  it,  save  being 
called  Dutch  boobies.  The  princess  royal  exhibited 
no  outward  manifestation  either  of  consciousness  or 
sympathy.  She  appeared  precisely  the  same  under 
all  contingencies ;  and  whether  the  lover  were  in  or 
out  of  England,  in  life  or  out  of  it,  seemed  to  this 
strong-minded  lady  to  be  one  and  the  same  thing. 

The  marriage  of  the  princess  royal  could  not  be 
concluded  without  an  application  to  Parliament.  To 
both  houses  a  civil  intimation  was  made  of  the  pro- 
posed union  of  the  Princess  Anne  and  the  Prince  of 
Orange.  In  this  intimation  the  king  graciously  men- 
tioned that  he  promised  himself  the  concurrence  and 
assistance  of  the  Commons  to  enable  him  to  give  such 
a  portion  with  his  eldest  daughter  as  should  be  suit- 
able to  the  occasion.  The  Commons'  committee 
promised  to  do  all  that  the  king  and  queen  could 
expect  from  them,  and  they  therefore  came  to  the 
resolution  to  sell  lands  in  the  island  of  St.  Christopher 
to  the  amount  of  ^80,000,  and  to  make  over  that 
sum  to  the  king,  as  the  dowry  of  his  eldest  daughter. 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  343 

The  resolution  made  part  of  a  bill  of  which  it  was 
only  one  of  the  items,  and  the  members  in  the  House 
affected  to  be  scandalised  that  the  dowry  of  a  princess 
of  England  should  be  "lumped  in  "  among  a  mass  of 
miscellaneous  items,  —  charities  to  individuals,  grants 
to  old  churches,  and  sums  awarded  for  even  less  dig- 
nified purposes.  But  the  bill  passed  as  it  stood,  and 
Caroline,  who  only  a  few  days  before  had  sent  a 
thousand  pounds  to  the  provost  of  Queen's  College, 
Oxford,  for  the  rebuilding  and  adorning  of  that 
college,  was  especially  glad  to  find  a  dowry  for  her 
daughter,  in  whatever  company  it  might  come,  pro- 
vided only  it  was  not  out  of  her  own  purse. 

The  news  of  the  securing  of  the  dowry  hastened 
the  coming  of  the  bridegroom.  On  the  7th  of  No- 
vember, 1732,  he  arrived  at  Greenwich,  and  thence 
proceeded  to  Somerset  House.  The  nuptials  were  to 
have  been  speedily  solemnised,  but  the  lover  fell 
grievously  sick.  No  philtre  could  restore  him  suf- 
ficiently to  appear  at  the  altar  on  the  day  originally 
appointed,  and  the  marriage  was  deferred  amid  a 
world  of  sighs.  There  was  no  one  whom  the  post- 
ponement of  the  marriage  more  annoyed  than  it  did 
the  Duchess  of  Marlborough.  She  was  then  residing 
in  Marlborough  House,  which  had  been  built  some 
five  and  twenty  years  previously  by  Wren.  That 
architect  was  employed,  not  because  he  was  preferred, 
but  that  Vanbrugh  might  be  vexed.  The  ground,  in 
which  had  formerly  been  kept  the  birds  and  fowls 
ultimately  destined  to  pass  through  the  kitchen  to 
the  royal  table,  had  been  leased  to  the  duchess  by 
Queen  Anne,  and  the  expenses  of  building  amounted 
to  nearly  .£50,000.  The  duchess  both  experienced 


344  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

and  caused  considerable  mortifications  here.  She 
used  to  speak  of  the  king  in  the  adjacent  palace  as 
her  "  neighbour  George."  The  entrance  to  the  house, 
from  Pall  Mall,  was,  as  it  still  is,  a  crooked  and  in- 
convenient one.  To  remedy  this  defect,  she  intended 
to  purchase  some  houses  "in  the  Priory,"  as  the 
locality  was  called,  for  the  purpose  of  pulling  them 
down  and  constructing  a  more  commodious  entry  to 
the  mansion ;  but  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  with  no  more 
dignified  motive  than  mere  spite,  secured  the  houses 
and  ground,  and  erected  buildings  on  the  latter,  which, 
as  now,  completely  blocked  in  the  front  of  the  duch- 
ess's mansion.  She  was  subjected  to  a  more  tem- 
porary, but  as  inconvenient,  blockade,  when  the 
preparations  for  the  wedding  of  the  imperious  Anne 
and  her  ugly  husband  were  going  on.  Among  other 
preparations  a  boarded  gallery,  through  which  the 
nuptial  procession  was  to  pass,  was  built  up  close 
against  the  duchess's  windows,  completely  darkening 
her  rooms.  As  the  boards  remained  there  during 
the  postponement  of  the  ceremony,  the  duchess  used 
to  look  at  them  with  the  remark,  "  I  wish  the  prin- 
cess would  oblige  me  by  taking  away  her  orange 
chest ! " 

But  the  sick  bridegroom  took  long  to  mend ;  and 
it  was  not  till  the  following  January  that  he  was  even 
sufficiently  convalescent  to  journey  by  easy  stages  to 
Bath,  and  there  drink  in  health  at  the  fashionable 
pump.  A  month's  attendance  there  restored  him  to 
something  like  health ;  and  in  February  his  Serene 
Highness  was  gravely  disporting  himself  at  Oxford, 
exchanging  compliments  and  eating  dinners  with  the 
sages  and  scholars  at  that  seat  of  learning.  Another 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  34$ 

month  was  allowed  to  pass,  and  then,  on  the  24th 
March,  1783,  the  royal  marriage  was  solemnised  "in 
the  French  Chapel,"  St.  James's,  by  the  Bishop  of 
London. 

The  ceremony  was  as  theatrical  and  coarse  as  such 
things  used  to  be  in  those  days.  The  prince  must 
have  looked  very  much  as  M.  Potier  used  to  look  in 
Riquet  a  la  Houppe,  before  his  transformation  from 
deformity  to  perfection.  He  was  attired  in  a  "  cloth 
of  gold  suit ; "  and  George  and  Caroline  may  be  par- 
doned if  they  smiled  at  the  "  baboon "  whom  they 
were  about  to  accept  for  their  son-in-law.  The  bride 
was  "in  virgin  robes  of  silver  tissue,  having  a  train 
six  yards  long,  which  was  supported  by  ten  dukes' 
and  earls'  daughters,  all  of  whom  were  attired  in 
robes  of  silver  tissue."  The  ceremony  took  place 
in  the  evening,  and  at  midnight  the  royal  family 
supped  in  public.  It  was  a  joyous  festival,  and  not 
before  two  in  the  morning  did  the  jaded  married 
couple  retire  to  the  bower  prepared  for  them,  where 
they  had  to  endure  the  further  nuisance  of  sitting  up 
in  bed,  in  rich  undresses,  while  the  court  and  nobility, 
"  fresh "  from  an  exhilarating  supper  and  strong 
wines,  defiled  before  them,  making  pleasant  remarks 
the  while,  as  "  fine  gentlemen  "  used  to  make,  who 
had  been  born  in  our  Augustan  age. 

The  married  couple  were  assuredly  a  strangely 
assorted  pair.  The  bride,  indeed,  was  not  without 
commonplace  charms.  In  common  with  the  dairy- 
maid, the  princess  had  a  lively  clear  look  and  a  very 
fair  complexion.  Like  many  a  dairymaid,  too,  of  the 
time,  she  was  very  much  marked  with  the  smallpox. 
She  was  also  ill-made,  and  inclined  to  become  as  obese 


346  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

as  her  royal  mother.  But  then  the  bridegroom  !  All 
writers  dealing  with  the  subject  agree  that  his  ugli- 
ness was  something  extraordinary.  No  one  doubts 
that  he  was  deformed ;  but  Hervey  adds  some  traits 
that  are  revolting.  His  Serene  Highness  did  not, 
like  the  gods,  distil  a  celestial  ichor.'  He  appears, 
however,  not  to  have  been  void  of  sense  or  good  feel- 
ing ;  for  when,  at  the  period  of  his  arrival,  he  was 
received  with  very  scanty  honours  and  cold  ceremony, 
was  made  to  feel  that  he  was  nothing  in  himself,  and 
could  only  become  anything  here  by  marrying  an  Eng- 
lish princess  ;  when  George,  if  not  Caroline,  "  snubbed  " 
the  courtiers  who  crowded  his  apartments  at  Somerset 
House;  and  when,  in  short,  the  prince  of  ;£  12,000  a 
year  was  made  to  feel  that  but  little  value  was  set 
upon  him,  —  he  bore  it  all  in  silence,  or  as  if  he  did 
not  perceive  it.  Let  us  hope  that  gallantry  for  the 
lady  induced  the  princely  Quasimodo  thus  to  act. 
It  was  almost  more  than  she  deserved  ;  for  while  the 
people  were  ready  to  believe  that  the  alliance  was 
entered  into  the  better  to  strengthen  the  Protestant 
succession,  Anne  herself  was  immediately  moved 
thereto  by  fear,  if  she  were  left  single,  of  ultimately 
depending  for  a  provision  upon  her  brother  Frederick. 
Nature  will  assert  its  claims  in  spite  of  pride  or 
expediency;  and  accordingly  it  was  observed  that, 
after  the  bridegroom  had  arrived,  and  the  marriage 
procession  began  to  move  through  the  temporarily 
constructed  gallery,  blazing  with  light,  and  glittering 
with  bright  gems  and  brighter  eyes,  the  bride  herself 
seemed  slightly  touched,  and  Caroline  especially  grave 
and  anxious  in  her  deportment.  She  appeared,  for 
the  first  time,  to  feel  that  her  daughter  was  about  to 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  347 

make  a  great  sacrifice,  and  her  consequent  anxiety 
was  probably  increased  by  the  conviction  that  it  was 
too  late  to  save  her  daughter  from  impending  fate. 
The  king  himself,  who  had  never  been  in  the  eager 
condition  of  the  seigneur  in  the  song,  who  so  per- 
emptorily exclaims : 

"  De  ma  fille  Isabella 
Sois  te'poux  a  Pinstant,  —  " 

manifested  more  impassibility  than  ever.  Finally, 
the  knot  was  tied  under  a  salvo  of  artillery  and  a 
world  of  sighs. 

The  sublime  and  the  ridiculous  stood  in  close 
familiarity  in  the  public  nuptial  chamber  in  the  even- 
ing. According  to  custom,  as  before  stated,  all  the 
court  met  in  this  apartment  to  congratulate  the 
newly  married  pair,  who  were  attired  in  fancy  night- 
dresses of  little  taste  and  great  splendour. 

Caroline  felt  compassion  for  her  daughter,  but  she 
restrained  her  feelings  until  her  eye  fell  upon  the 
bridegroom.  In  his  silver  tissue  nightdress,  his  light 
peruque,  his  ugliness  and  his  deformity,  he  struck  her 
as  the  impersonation  of  a  monster.  His  ill  figure 
was  so  ill  dressed,  that,  looked  at  from  behind,  he 
appeared  to  have  no  head,  and  seen  from  before,  he 
appeared  as  if  he  had  neither  neck  nor  legs.1  The 
queen  was  wonderfully  moved  at  the  sight ;  moved 
with  pity  for  her  daughter,  and  with  indignation  at 
her  husband.  The  portion  of  the  ceremony  which 
used  to  be  the  merriest  was  by  far  the  most  mourn- 
ful, at  least  so  far  as  the  queen's  participation  therein 
was  concerned.  She  fairly  cried  with  mingled  vexa- 

1  Lord  Hervey. 


348  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

tion,  disappointment,  and  disgust.  She  could  not 
even  revert  to  the  subject,  for  days  after,  without 
crying,  and  yet  laughing  too,  as  the  oddity  of  the 
bridegroom's  ugliness  came  across  her  mind.  And 
indeed  that  happy  man,  although  he  could  not  have 
said  of  his  bride,  except  by  comparison,  — 

"  Grands  dieux,  combien  elle  est  jolie ! " 
he  might  with  good  reason  have  sung  of  himself : 
"  Et  moi,  je  suis,  je  suis  si  laid." 

It  may  be  asserted,  without  much  fear  of  contra- 
diction, that  a  wedding  of  any  pretension  at  all  is 
seldom  got  through  without  offence  to  somebody. 
The  wedding  of  the  Princess  Anne  was  one  of  more 
than  mere  pretensions,  and  the  ceremonial  arrange- 
ments gave  rise  to  many  ill  feelings.  The  Irish 
peers,  above  all  others,  felt  themselves  insulted,  and 
were  warmly  resentful,  as  was  only  natural  under  the 
circumstances. 

Lord  Hervey  was  the  master  of  the  ceremonies  on 
this  serio-comic  occasion.  According  to  his  table  of 
precedence,  the  Irish  peers  were  to  walk  in  the  pro- 
cession after  the  entire  body  of  the  peerage  of  Great 
Britain.  This  was  putting  the  highest  Irish  peer 
beneath  the  lowest  baron  in  Britain.  The  Hibernian 
lords  claimed  to  walk  immediately  after  the  English 
and  Scotch  peers  of  their  own  degree.  It  was  the 
most  modest  claim  ever  made  by  that  august  body ; 
but  modest  as  it  was,  the  arrogant  peers  of  Great 
Britain  threatened,  if  the  claim  were  allowed,  to 
absent  themselves  from  the  ceremony  altogether! 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  349 

The  case  was  represented  to  Caroline,  and  she  took 
the  side  of  right  and  common  sense ;  but  when  she 
was  told  that  to  allow  the  Irish  claim  would  be  to 
banish  every  British  peer  from  the  solemn  ceremony, 
she  was  weak  enough  to  give  way.  Lord  Hervey, 
in  his  programme  for  the  occasion,  omitted  to  make 
any  mention  of  the  peers  of  Ireland  at  all  —  thus 
leaving  them  to  walk  where  they  could.  On  being 
remonstrated  with,  he  said  that  if  the  Irish  lords 
were  not  satisfied,  he  would  keep  all  the  finery  stand- 
ing, and  they  might  walk  through  it  in  any  order  of 
precedency  they  liked,  on  the  day  after  the  wedding. 
One  lord  grievously  complained  of  the  omission  of 
the  illustrious  Hibernian  body  from  the  programme. 
Lord  Hervey  excused  himself  by  remarking,  that  as 
the  Irish  House  of  Peers  was  then  sitting  in  Dublin, 
he  never  thought,  being  an  Englishman,  of  the 
august  members  of  that  assembly  being  in  two  places 
at  once. 

The  claim  was  probably  disallowed  because  Ire- 
land was  not  then  in  union  with  England,  as  Scotland 
was.  On  no  other  ground  could  the  claim  have  been 
refused  ;  and  Caroline  saw  that  even  that  ground  was 
not  a  very  good  one  whereon  to  rest  a  denial.  As  it 
was,  the  Irish  peers  felt  like  poor  relations,  neither 
invited  to  nor  prohibited  from  the  joyous  doings,  but 
with  a  thorough  conviction  that,  to  use  a  popular 
phrase,  their  room  was  deemed  preferable  to  their 
company. 

During  the  week  following  the  marriage,  Frederick, 
Prince  of  Wales,  was  employed,  after  a  fashion  which 
suited  his  tastes  extremely  well,  in  escorting  his 
brother-in-law  to  witness  the  sights  of  London.  It 


350          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

then  appears  to  have  suddenly  struck  the  govern- 
ment that  it  would  be  as  well  to  make  an  English- 
man of  the  bridegroom,  and  that  that  consummation 
could  not  be  too  quickly  arrived  at.  Accordingly,  a 
bill  for  naturalising  the  prince  was  brought  in  and 
read  three  times  on  the  same  day.  It,  of  course, 
passed  unanimously,  and  the  prince  received  the  in- 
telligence of  his  having  been  converted  into  a  Briton 
with  a  phlegm  which  showed  that  he  had  not  alto- 
gether ceased  to  be  a  Dutchman. 

He  was  much  more  pleasurably  excited  in  the 
April  of  the  following  year,  when  he  heard  that  the 
king  had  sent  a  written  message  to  the  Commons, 
intimating  that  he  had  settled  five  thousand  a  year 
on  the  princess  royal,  and  desiring  that  they  would 
enable  him  to  make  the  grant  for  the  life  of  the  prin- 
cess, as  it  would  otherwise  determine  on  his  Majesty's 
death.  The  Commons  complied  with  this  message, 
and  the  Prince  of  Orange  was  infinitely  more  delighted 
with  this  act  than  with  that  which  bestowed  on  him 
the  legal  rights  of  an  Englishman. 

This  pleasant  little  arrangement  having  been  con- 
cluded, the  prince  and  princess  set  out  for  Holland, 
from  St.  James's,  on  the  loth  of  April,  1734;  and 
in  July  of  the  same  year  the  princess  was  again  in 
England,  not  at  all  to  the  satisfaction  of  her  sire, 
and  but  very  scantily  to  the  delight  of  her  mother. 
The  young  lady,  however,  was  determined  to  remain  ; 
and  it  was  not  till  November  that  she  once  more 
returned  to  her  home  behind  the  dykes.  The  queen 
was  not  sorry  to  part  with  her,  for  just  then  she  was 
deep  in  the  fracas  connected  with  the  dismissal  of 
her  husband's  "favourite,"  Lady  Suffolk,  from  her 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  351 

office  of  mistress  of  the  robes  to  her  Majesty,  an 
office  in  which  she  was  succeeded  by  the  more  worthy 
Countess  of  Tankerville.  The  king  had  the  less  time 
to  be  troubled  with  thought  about  "that  old  deaf 
woman,"  as  he  very  ungallantly  used  to  call  his 
ancient  "favourite,"  as  he  too  was  deeply  engaged 
in  protesting  against  the  Elector  Palatine,  who  had 
been  very  vigorously  protesting  against  the  right  of 
the  king,  as  Elector  of  Hanover,  to  bear  the  title  of 
arch-treasurer  of  the  empire. 

But  if  Caroline  began  to  forget  her  daughter, 
Anne  was  borne  in  remembrance  by  her  sister, 
Amelia. 

The  commiseration  which  the  queen  had  felt  for  her 
daughter  was  shared  by  the  sister  of  the  latter,  the 
Princess  Amelia,  who  declared  that  nothing  on  earth 
could  have  induced  her  to  wed  with  such  a  man  as 
the  Prince  of  Orange.  Her  declaration  was  accepted 
for  as  much  as  it  was  worth.  The  gentle  Princess 
Caroline,  on  the  other  hand,  thought  that  her  sister, 
under  the  circumstances,  had  acted  wisely,  and  that, 
had  she  been  so  placed,  she  would  have  acted  in  like 
manner.  Nor  did  the  conduct  of  the  bride  give  the 
world  any  reason  to  think  that  she  stood  in  need  of 
pity.  She  appeared  to  adore  the  "  monster,"  who,  it 
must  be  confessed,  exhibited  no  particular  regard  for 
his  spouse.  The  homage  she  paid  him  was  perfect. 
"  She  made  prodigious  court  to  him,"  says  Lord 
Hervey,  "  addressed  everything  she  said  to  him,  and 
applauded  everything  he  said  to  anybody  else." 

Perhaps  the  pride  of  the  princess  would  not  per- 
mit a  doubt  to  be  thrown  upon  her  supreme  happi- 
ness. Her  brother  Frederick  strove  to  mar  it  by 


352          LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

raising  a  quarrel,  on  a  slight,  but  immensely  absurd, 
foundation.  He  reproached  her  for  the  double  fault 
of  presuming  to  be  married  before  him,  and  of  accept- 
ing a  settlement  from  her  father,  when  he  had  none. 
He  was  ingenious  in  finding  fault,  but  there  may 
have  been  a  touch  of  satire  in  this,  for  Anne  was 
known  to  have  been  as  groundlessly  angry  with  her 
brother  for  a  circumstance  which  he  could  not  very 
well  help,  namely,  his  own  birth,  whereby  the  prin- 
cess royal  ceased  to  be  next  heir  to  the  crown. 

The  prince,  however,  was  not  much  addicted  to 
showing  respect  to  anybody,  least  of  all  to  his 
mother.  It  was  because  of  this  miserable  want  of 
respect  for  the  queen  that  the  king,  in  an  inter- 
view forced  on  him  by  his  son,  refused  to  settle 
a  fixed  annuity  upon  him,  —  at  least  till  he  had 
manifested  a  more  praiseworthy  conduct  toward  the 
queen. 

The  anxiety  of  Frederick  on  this  occasion  was  not 
unnatural,  for  he  was  deeply  in  debt,  and  of  the 
£ 1 00,000  granted  to  the  prince  by  Parliament  out  of 
the  civil  list,  the  king  allowed  him  only  ,£36,000. 
The  remainder  was  appropriated  by  the  king,  who 
doubtless  made  his  son's  conduct  the  rule  of  his 
liberality,  measuring  his  supplies  to  the  prince, 
according  as  the  latter  was  well  or  ill  behaved.  It 
was  a  degrading  position  enough,  and  the  degrada- 
tion was  heightened  by  the  silent  contempt  with 
which  the  king  passed  over  his  son's  application  to 
be  permitted  to  join  in  active  service.  Throughout 
these  first  family  quarrels,  the  queen  preserved  a 
great  impartiality,  with  some  leaning,  perhaps,  to- 
ward serving  her  son.  Nothing,  however,  came 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  353 

of  it ;  and,  for  the  moment,  Frederick  was  fain  to  be 
content  with  doing  the  honours  of  the  metropolis 
to  his  ungraceful  brother-in-law. 

The  congratulatory  addresses  which  were  pre- 
sented on  the  occasion  of  the  marriage,  had  a  mor- 
dantly  satirical  tone  about  them.  It  is  wonderful 
how  George  and  Caroline,  whose  unpopularity  was 
increasing  at  this  time,  continued  to  preserve  their 
equanimity  at  hearing  praises  rung  on  the  name  and 
services  of '"Orange,"  —  the  name  of  a  prince  who 
had  become  King  of  England,  by  rendering  the 
questionable  service  to  his  father-in-law  of  turning 
him  off  the  throne. 

The  address  of  the  lords  to  the  queen,  especially 
congratulating  the  mother  on  the  marriage  of  her 
daughter,  was  rendered  painful  instead  of  pleasant, 
by  its  being  presented,  that  is,  spoken,  to  her  by 
Lord  Chesterfield.  Caroline  had  never  seen  this 
peer  since  the  time  he  was  dismissed  from  her  hus- 
band's household,  when  she  was  Princess  of  Wales. 
He  had  not  been  presented  at  court  since  the  acces- 
sion of  the  present  sovereign,  and  the  queen  was 
therefore  resolved  to  treat  as  an  utter  stranger  the 
man  who  had  been  impertinent  enough  to  declare  he 
designed  that  the  step  he  took  should  be  considered 
as  a  compliment  to  the  queen.  The  latter  abhorred 
him,  nevertheless,  for  his  present  attempt  to  turn  the 
compliment,  addressed  to  her  by  the  lords,  into  a 
joke.  Before  he  appeared,  Caroline  intimated  her 
determination  not  to  let  the  peer's  cool  impertinence 
awe  or  disconcert  her.  He  really  did  find  what  she 
declared  he  should,  that  "  it  was  as  little  in  his  power 
for  his  presence  to  embarrass  her,  as  for  his  raillery 


354  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

behind  her  back  to  pique  her,  or  his  consummate 
skill  in  politics  to  distress  the  king  or  his  min- 
isters." ' 

The  queen  acted  up  to  this  resolution.  She 
received  Lords  Chesterfield,  Scarborough,  and  Hard- 
wicke,  the  bearers  of  the  address,  in  her  bedchamber, 
no  one  else  being  present  but  her  children  and  Lord 
Hervey,  who  stood  behind  her  chair.  The  last-named 
nobleman,  in  describing  the  scene,  says :  "  Lord 
Chesterfield's  speech  was  well  written  and  well  got 
by  heart,  and  yet  delivered  with  a  faltering  voice, 
a  face  as  white  as  a  sheet,  and  every  limb  trembling 
with  concern.  The  queen's  answer  was  quiet  and 
natural,  and  delivered  with  the  same  ease  that  she 
would  have  spoken  to  the  most  indifferent  person 
in  her  circle." 

Caroline,  however,  had  more  serious  matters  to 
attend  to  during  this  year  than  affairs  of  marriage. 
Of  these  we  will  now  briefly  speak. 

Sir  Robert  Walpole's  celebrated  excise  scheme 
was  prolific  in  raising  political  agitations,  and  exciting 
both  political  and  personal  passions.  The  peers 
were,  strangely  enough,  even  more  resolute  against 
the  measure  than  the  Commons  ;  or  perhaps  it  would 
be  more  correct  to  say,  that  a  portion  of  them  took 
advantage  of  the  popular  feeling  to  further  thereby 
their  own  particular  interests  and  especial  objects. 

It  is  again  illustrative  of  the  power  and  influence 
of  Caroline,  and  of  the  esteem  in  which  she  was  held, 
that  a  body  of  the  peers  delegated  Lord  Stair  to 
proceed  to  the  queen,  at  Kensington,  and  remon- 
strate with  her  upon  the  unconstitutional  and  des- 

1  Lord  Hervey. 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  355 

tructive    measure,    as    they    designated    the    excise 
project. 

Lord  Stair  was  a  bold  man,  and  was  accustomed 
to  meet  and  contend  with  sovereigns.  He  had  not 
only  on  many  an  occasion  foiled  the  King  and  the 
Regent  of  France,  but  he  had  defeated  the  Polish 
monarch  in  a  way  he  loved  to  boast  of.  That  poten- 
tate, when  Lord  Stair  was  residing  at  Warsaw,  once 
very  much  astonished  the  Scotch  nobleman,  by  ex- 
hibiting a  feat  which  he  accomplished  with  singular 
strength  and  dexterity.  It  was  this :  grasping  a 
sword,  and  giving  it  a  peculiar  swing,  or  twist  in  the 
air,  ending  with  a  sudden  jerk,  he  would  cause 
the  blade  to  break  off  close  at  the  handle.  He 
boasted  that  he  could  produce  the  same  effect  with 
any  sword.  Lord  Stair  defied  him  to  the  trial,  and 
brought  him  a  stout  Scottish  broadsword,  which 
successfully  resisted  all  the  attempts,  strength,  and 
skill  of  the  iron-wristed  monarch,  to  fracture  it.  He 
acknowledged  his  defeat,  and  struck  a  medal  to  com- 
memorate that  rare  occurrence.  On  one  side  was 
the  emblazoned  shield  of  Poland,  on  the  other  a 
naked  arm  brandishing  a  sword,  with  the  motto 
beneath,  Vis  tandem  inaqualis.  Lord  Stair,  so 
accustomed  to  foil  sovereigns,  had  no  doubt  of  being 
able  to  turn  Caroline  to  his  purpose.  But  the  queen 
twisted  him  as  Augustus  had  the  weapons  of  Conti- 
nental manufacture.  She  shivered  the  Scottish  blade 
to  boot ;  and  the  noble  lord  himself  might  have 
retired  from  the  interview  muttering,  Vis  tandem 
incequalis,  —  My  strength  has  at  length  been  unequal 
to  what  it  was  tried  upon. 
•  And  no  wonder;  for  never  did  delegate  perform 


356  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

his  mission  so  awkwardly.  He  thought  to  awaken 
the  queen's  indignation  against  Walpole,  by  impart- 
ing to  her  the  valuable  admonitory  knowledge  that 
she  was  ruled  by  that  subtle  statesman.  He  fancied 
he  improved  his  position  by  informing  her  that  Wal- 
pole was  universally  hated,  that  he  was  no  gentle- 
man, and  that  he  was  as  ill-looking  as  he  was 
ill-inclined.  He  even  forgot  his  mission,  save  when 
he  spoke  of  fidelity  to  his  constituents,  by  going  into 
purely  personal  matters,  railing  at  the  minister  whose 
very  shoe-buckles  he  had  kissed,  in  order  to  be 
appointed  vice-admiral  of  Scotland,  when  the  Duke 
of  Queensberry  was  ejected  from  that  post, — and 
accusing  Walpole  of  being  manifestly  untrue  to  the 
trust  which  he  held,  seeing  that  whenever  there 
was  an  office  to  dispose  of,  he  invariably  preferred 
giving  it  to  the  Campbells  rather  than  to  him,  — 
Stair.  To  the  Campbells !  he  reiterated,  as  if  the 
very  name  were  enough  to  rouse  Caroline  against 
Walpole.  To  the  Campbells!  who  tried  to  rule 
England  by  means  of  the  king's  mistress ;  opposed 
to  governing  it  by  means  of  the  king's  wife. 

Caroline  heard  him  with  decent  and  civil  patience 
until  he  had  gone  through  his  list  of  private  griev- 
ances, and  began  to  meddle  with  matters  personal 
to  herself  and  the  royal  hearth,  —  if  I  may  use  such 
a  term.  She  then  burst  forth,  and  was  superb  in 
her  rebuke,  —  superb  in  its  matter  and  manner,  — 
superb  in  her  dignity  and  in  the  severity  with  which 
she  crushed  Lord  Stair  beneath  her  fiery  sarcasms 
and  her  withering  contempt.  She  ridiculed  his  asser- 
tions of  fidelity,  and  told  him  he  had  become  traitor 
to  his  own  country,  and  the  betrayer  of  his  own 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  357 

constituents.  She  mocked  his  complacent  assur- 
ances that  his  object  was  not  personal,  but  patriotic. 
She  professed  her  intense  abhorrence  of  having  the 
private  dissensions  of  noblemen  ripped  open  in  her 
presence,  and  bade  him  learn  better  manners  than 
to  speak,  as  he  had  done,  of  "  the  king's  servants  to 
the  king's  wife." 

"My  conscience,"  said  Lord  Stair. 

"Don't  talk  to  me  of  your  conscience,  my  lord," 
said  Caroline,  "or  I  shall  faint."  The  conversation 
was  in  French,  and  the  queen's  precise  words  were, 
"  Ne  me  parlez  point  de  conscience,  milord ;  vous  me 
faites  eVanouir." 

The  Scottish  lord  was  sadly  beaten  down,  and 
confessed  his  disgraceful  defeat,  by  requesting  her 
Majesty  to  be  good  enough  to  keep  what  had  passed 
at  the  interview,  as  a  secret.  He  added,  in  French, 
"  Madame,  le  roi  est  tromp6,  et  vous  etes  trahie,"  — 
The  king  is  deceived,  and  you  are  betrayed.  He 
had  previously  alluded  to  Lords  Bolingbroke  and 
Carteret,  as  men  worthy  indeed  to  be  trusted, 
and  who  had  the  honour  and  glory  of  the  kingdom 
at  heart.  These  names,  with  such  testimonial 
attached  to  them,  especially  excited  the  royal  indig- 
nation. "Bolingbroke  and  Carteret!"  exclaimed 
Caroline.  "  You  may  tell  them  from  me,  if  you  will, 
that  they  are  men  of  no  parts ;  that  they  are  said  to 
be  two  of  the  greatest  liars  in  any  country ;  and  that 
my  observation  and  experience  confirm  what  is  said 
of  them."  ' 

It  will  be  seen  from  this,  that  the  period  was  one 
when  even  very  great  people  indulged  in  very  strong 

1  Lord  Hervey. 


358  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

terms,  and  that  Caroline  was  not  behind  her  husband 
in  the  power  of  flinging  violent  epithets,  when  she 
was  in  the  humour,  and  opportunity  offered. 

Stair  reiterated  his  request  that  the  incidents  of 
the  private  interview  should  not  be  further  spoken 
of.  Caroline  consented,  and  she  must  have  felt  some 
contempt  for  him  as  he  also  promisedUhat  he  would 
keep  them  secret,  giving  knowledge  thereof  to  no 
man.  . 

"  Well  ? "  said  Carteret  inquiringly,  as  he  met  with 
Lord  Stair,  after  this  notable  interview  with  Caroline. 

"  Well !  "  exclaimed  Lord  Stair,  "  I  have  staggered 
her !  "  A  pigmy  might  as  well  have  boasted  of  having 
staggered  Thalestris  and  Hippolyte. 

A  short  time  subsequently,  Lord  Hervey  was  with 
the  queen  in  her  apartment,  purveying  to  her,  as  he 
was  wont  to  do,  the  floating  news  of  the  day.  Among 
other  things,  he  told  her  of  an  incident  in  a  debate  in 
Parliament  upon  the  army  supplies.  In  the  course 
of  the  discussion,  Carteret  had  observed  that,  at 
the  period  when  Cardinal  Mazarin  was  ruining 
France  by  his  oppressive  measures,  a  great  man 
sought  an  audience  of  the  queen  (Anne  of  Austria, 
mother  of  the  young  King  Louis  XIV.),  and  after 
explaining  to  her  the  perils  of  the  times,  ended 
with  the  remark  that  she  was  maintaining  a  man 
at  the  helm,  who  deserved  to  be  rowing  in  the 
galleys. 

Caroline  immediately  knew  that  Lord  Stair  had 
revealed  what  he  had  petitioned  her  to  keep  secret ; 
and  feeling  that  she  was  thereby  exonerated  from 
observing  further  silence,  her  Majesty  took  the  op- 
portunity to  "  out  with  it  all,"  as  she  said  in  not  less 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  359 

choice  French  :  "  J'ai  pris  la  premiere  occasion  d'6go- 
siller  tout." 

Reverting  to  Carteret's  illustration,  she  observed 
that  the  "  great  man  "  noticed  by  him  was  Cond6,  a 
man  who  never  had  a  word  to  say  against  Mazarin,  as 
long  as  the  cardinal  fed  a  rapacity  which  could  never 
be  satisfied.  This  was,  in  some  degree,  Stair's  posi- 
tion with  regard  to  Walpole.  "  Cond£,  in  his  inter- 
view with  the  Queen  of  France,"  observed  the  well 
read  Queen  of  England,  "  had  for  his  object  to 
impose  upon  her  and  France,  by  endeavouring  to  per- 
suade her  that  his  private  resentments  were  only  a 
consequence  of  his  zeal  for  the  public  service." 

Lord  Hervey,  very  gallantly  and  courtier-like, 
expressed  his  wish  that  her  Majesty  could  have 
been  in  the  House  to  let  the  senate  know  her  wis- 
dom ;  or  that  she  could  have  been  concealed  there, 
to  have  had  the  opportunity  of  saying  with  Agrip- 
pine : 

"  Derriere  une  voile,  invisible,  et  prdsente, 
Je  fus  de  ce  grand  corps  1'ame  toute  puissante." 

The  quotation,  perhaps,  could  not  have  been  alto- 
gether applicable,  but  as  Lord  Hervey  quoted  it,  and 
"  my  lord  "  was  a  man  of  wit,  it  is  doubtless  as  well 
placed  as  wit  could  make  it.  The  queen,  at  all  events, 
took  it  as  a  compliment,  laughed,  and  declared,  that 
often  when  she  was  with  these  impatient  fellows,  ever 
ready  with  their  unreasonable  remonstrances,  she  was 
tempted  herself  to  say,  with  Agrippine,  that  she 
was  — 

"  Fille,  femme,  et  mere  de  vos  maitres,"  — 


360  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

a  quotation  less  applicable,  even,  than  the  former,  but 
in  which  Lord  Hervey  detected  such  abundance  of 
wit  that  he  went  into  a  sort  of  ecstasy  of  delight 
at  the  queen's  judgment,  humour,  knowledge,  and 
ability. 

When  the  Excise  Bill  was  for  the  first  time  brought 
before  the  House,  the  debate  lasted  till  one  in  the 
morning.  Lord  Hervey,  during  the  evening,  wrote 
an  account  of  its  progress  to  the  king  and  queen  ; 
and  when  he  repaired  to  the  palace  at  the  conclusion 
of  the  discussion,  the  king  kept  him  in  the  queen's 
bedchamber,  talking  over  the  scene,  till  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  and  never  for  a  moment  remembered 
that  the  hungry  intelligencer  had  not  dined  since  the 
yesterday. 

When  the  clamour  against  the  bill  rose  to  such  a 
pitch  that  all  England,  the  army  included,  seemed 
ready  to  rise  against  it,  Walpole  offered  himself  as  a 
personal  sacrifice,  if  the  service  and  interests  of  the 
king  would  be  promoted  by  his  surrender  of  office 
and  power.  It  is  again  illustrative  of  the  influence  of 
Caroline  that  this  offer  was  made  to  her,  and  not  to 
the  king.  He  was,  in  truth,  the  queen's  minister ; 
and  nobly  she  stood  by  him.  When  Walpole  made 
the  offer  in  question,  Caroline  declared  that  she 
would  not  be  so  mean,  so  cowardly,  or  so  ungrateful 
as  to  abandon  him ;  and  she  infused  the  same  spirit 
into  the  king.  The  latter  had  intended,  from  the 
first,  to  reign  and  govern,  and  be  effectively  his  own 
minister ;  but  Caroline  so  wrought  upon  him,  that  he 
thought  he  had  of  himself  reached  the  conviction 
that  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  trust  in  a  minister, 
and  that  Walpole  was  the  fittest  man  for  such  an 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  361 

office.  And  so  he  grew  to  love  the  very  man  whom 
he  had  been  wont  to  hold  in  his  heart's  extremest 
hate.  He  would  even  occasionally  speak  of  him  as  a 
"noble  fellow,"  and,  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  would 
listen  to  an  account  of  some  courageous  stand  Wai- 
pole  had  made  in  the  House  against  the  enemies  of 
the  government,  and  he  would  add  the  while  a  run 
ning  commentary  of  sobs. 

The  queen's  greatest  triumph  was  this  overcoming 
of  her  husband's  personal  hatred  for  Walpole.  It 
could  not  have  been  an  achievement  easy  to  be 
accomplished.  But  her  art  in  effecting  such  achieve- 
ments was  supreme,  and  she  alone  could  turn  to  her 
own  purpose  the  caprices  of  a  hot-headed  man,  of 
whom  it  has  been  said,  that  he  was  of  iron  obstinacy, 
but  that  he  was  unlike  iron  in  this,  that  the  hotter  he 
became,  the  more  impossible  it  was  to  bend  him. 
Caroline  found  him  pliant  when  she  found  him  cool. 
But  then,  too,  he  was  most  wary,  and  it  was  necessary 
so  to  act  as  to  cause  every  turn  which  she  compelled 
him  to  make,  appear  to  himself  as  if  it  were  the 
result  of  his  own  unbiassed  volition. 

Supremely  able  as  Caroline  was,  she  could  not, 
however,  always  conceal  her  emotion.  Thus,  at  this 
very  period  of  the  agitation  of  the  Excise  Bill,  on 
being  told,  at  one  of  her  evening  drawing-rooms,  of 
the  difficulties  and  dangers  which  beset  the  path  of 
the  government,  she  burst  into  tears,  became  unusu- 
ally excited,  and  finally  affecting,  and  perhaps  feeling, 
headache  and  vapours,  she  broke  up  her  quadrille 
party,  and  betrayed  in  her  outward  manner  an  appar- 
ent conviction  of  impending  calamity.  She  evinced 
the  same  weakness  on  being  told,  on  a  subsequent 


362  LIVES  OF  THE  QUEENS  OF  ENGLAND 

evening,  that  Walpole  was  in  a  majority  of  only 
seventeen.  Such  a  small  majority  she  felt  was  a 
defeat ;  and,  on  this  occasion,  she  again  burst  into 
tears,  and  for  the  first  time  expressed  a  fear  that  the 
court  must  give  way !  The  sovereign  was,  at  the 
same  time,  as  strong  within  her  as  the  woman  ;  and 
when  she  heard  of  the  subordinate  holders  of  govern- 
ment posts  voting  against  the  minister,  or  declining 
to  vote  with  him,  she  bitterly  denounced  them, 
exclaiming  that  they  who  refused  to  march  with 
their  leader  were  as  guilty  as  they  who  openly  de- 
serted, and  that  both  merited  condign  punishment.1 

The  king  on  this  occasion  was  as  excited  as  his 
consort,  but  he  manifested  his  feelings  in  a  different 
way.  He  made  Lord  Hervey  repeat  the  names  of 
those  who  thwarted  the  views  of  the  Crown,  and  he 
grunted  forth  an  angry  commentary  at  each  name. 
"  Lord  John  Cavendish,"  began  Hervey.  "A  fool !  " 
snorted  the  king.  "Lord  Charles  Cavendish."  "Half 
mad  !  "  "  Sir  William  Lowther."  "  A  whimsical  fel- 
low !"  "Sir  Thomas  Prendergast."  "An  Irish 
blockhead  ! "  "  Lord  Tyrconnel."  "A  puppy,"  said 
George,  "  who  never  votes  twice  on  the  same  side !  " 

On  the  other  hand,  the  populace  made  their  com- 
ment on  the  proceedings  of  the  court.  It  was  ren- 
dered in  a  highly  popular  way,  and  with  much 
significancy.  In  the  city  of  London,  for  instance, 
the  mob  hung  in  effigy  Sir  Robert  Walpole  and  a  fat 
woman.  The  male  figure  was  duly  ticketed.  The 
female  effigy  was  well  understood  to  mean  the  queen. 

Her  power,  would,  after  all,  not  have  followed,  in 
its  fall,  that  of  Walpole.  Lord  Hervey  remarks  that, 

1  Lord  Hervey. 


CAROLINE  WILHELMINA  DOROTHEA  363 

had  he  retired,  Caroline  would  have  placed  before  the 
king  the  names  of  a  new  ministry,  and  that  the 
administration  would  not  have  hung  together  a 
moment  after  it  had  outlived  her  liking. 

In  the  meantime  her  indefatigability  was  great. 
At  the  suggestion,  it  is  supposed,  of  Walpole,  she 
sent  for  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  Doctor  Hoadly,  who 
repaired  to  the  interview  with  his  weak  person  and 
stately  independence,  if  one  may  so  speak,  upheld  by 
his  "crutched  stick."  His  power  must  have  been 
considered  very  great,  and  so  must  his  caprice;  for 
he  was  frequently  sent  for  by  Caroline,  remonstrated 
with  for  supposed  rebellion,  or  urged  to  exert  all  his 
good  offices  in  support  of  the  Crown.  It  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  the  lengthy  speeches  reported  by 
Hervey  were  actually  delivered  by  queen  and  bishop. 
There  is  nothing  longer  in  Livy,  and  we  are  not  told 
that  any  one  took  them  down.  Substantially,  how- 
ever, they  may  be  true.  The  queen  was  insinuating, 
complimentary,  suggestive,  and  audacious ;  the  bishop 
all  duty,  submission,  and  promise,  —  as  far  as  his  con- 
sistency and  principles  could  be  engaged.  But,  after 
all,  the  immense  mountain  of  anxiety  and  stratagem 
was  reared  in  vain,  for  Walpole  withdrew  his  bill, 
and  Caroline  felt  that  England  was  but  nominally 
a  monarchy. 

END   OF    VOLUME    I. 


DA 


Date  OUP 


DC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    000911  534    6 


